Shownotes
John Robbins is an absolute trailblazer whose story and mission really go beyond the kale. Imagine being born into incredible wealth - private schools, country clubs, a 14,000 square foot home with multiple three-car garages, and family yachts at your fingertips. Now, imagine walking away from that extravagant life on purpose and with a purpose.
John Robbins followed the call of his conscience and walked away from the family business, the Baskin Robbins Ice Cream empire, and moved to a remote island seeking greater purpose and meaning in life. He knew he wanted to be in service to mother earth and the planet.
His first book, the 1987 Diet for a New America was truly groundbreaking and decades ahead of its time. It was and is one of the quintessential books that tie together the impact of foods on your health, your happiness, and the planet.
John has gone on to write nine books and, today, he shares stories about a few of those, including, The New Good Life- Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less. His life stories run the gamut of emotions from heartbreaking and joyful, to educational and inspirational.
John Robbins has chosen compassion over consumption at every turn and, after today’s episode, you’ll be more than inspired to do the same.
Episode Highlights
7:50 John had polio as a child - how he adapted and 'muscled up' for vitality and strength
12:05 John’s Baskin Robbins origin story - how he followed the call of his conscience
15:45 John questions the link between the poor health of his family and the ice cream empire
20:00 How a chance book recommendation from his father's cardiologist changed everything for John’s father’s health and their broken relationship
33:50 Why he headed to a remote island with his wife to start fresh
44:30 How Diet for a New America Launched the modern health food movement
49:59 What happened when “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” wanted to interview John
1:00:00 John’s Book - The New Good Life backstory and how John lost his own money in an investment nightmare
1:08:15 Genesis of the Food Revolution Summit with Ocean and John Robbins - The Largest Gathering of Food Conscious People on the Planet
1:36:10 Why and how John remains hopeful in these tumultuous times
Episode Resources
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Transcripts
I would love to see our goal be unlimited compassion.
Speaker A:You know, why don't we work to create a world where it's safe for people's hearts, safe for their love, safe for their joy, safe for their peace?
Speaker A:You know, that's the world where I think the human spirit would most thrive.
Speaker A:And who knows what problems we could then solve if we weren't wasting our so much of our genius and our resources on stupid and shallow things.
Speaker B:I'm Rip Esselstyn and welcome to the Plantstrong Podcast.
Speaker B:The mission at Plantstrong is to further the advancement of all things within the plant based movement.
Speaker B:We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant based living and envision a world that universally understands, promotes and and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment, and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with.
Speaker B:We welcome you wherever you are on your Plan Strong journey and I hope that you enjoy the show.
Speaker B:Hello, my Plan Strong Pickles.
Speaker B:I'm RIP Esselstyn and I want to thank you for joining me once again on the Plan Strong podcast.
Speaker B:Today I have an absolute trailblazer on the show whose story and mission really goes beyond the kale.
Speaker B:I want you to imagine being born into incredible wealth, and I'm talking wealth beyond your wildest dreams with private schools, country clubs, 15,000 square foot homes with three three car garages and family yachts at your fingertips.
Speaker B:Now imagine walking away from all of that extravagance on purpose and with a purpose.
Speaker B:John Robbins followed the call of his conscience and walked away from the Baskin and Robbins family ice cream business empire and moved to a remote island, seeking greater purpose and meaning in his life.
Speaker B:He knew he wanted to be in service to Mother Nature and the planet.
Speaker B:And so he wrote and he wrote and he wrote.
Speaker B: or a New America, came out in: Speaker B:It was and is one of the quintessential books that ties together the impact that our foods have on our health, our happiness, and this planet.
Speaker B:John has gone on to write nine more books, and today he shares stories about a few of those, including one of my favorites, the New Good Life.
Speaker B:His life stories run the gamut of emotions, from heartbreaking and joyful to educational and inspirational.
Speaker B:My plant Strong Pickles because you listen to this podcast, I know you want to prioritize health, kindness, purpose and love.
Speaker B:John Robbins has chosen compassion over consumption at every single turn.
Speaker B:And I know after today's episode, you'll be more than inspired to do the same.
Speaker B:Enjoy.
Speaker B:John, it is so good to see you again.
Speaker A:Oh, it's good to see you, Rip.
Speaker A:Always.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think it's.
Speaker B:I mean, if I'm not mistaken, the last time I saw you was probably when you.
Speaker B:Maybe you.
Speaker B:When you came to Austin and you spoke at one of our.
Speaker B:One of our medical immersion programs with Whole Foods.
Speaker A:It could be.
Speaker B: Which was like,: Speaker A:Yeah, it could be.
Speaker A:Although I've been aware of you, I've been tracking you, and I gotta check out this out rep.
Speaker A:I. I have heard.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think it's true, but it's kind of amazing if it's true.
Speaker A:It's like.
Speaker A:It's incredible to me.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's a hard.
Speaker A:Hard for me to grasp.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Is it true that you, at the age of, what are you, 57?
Speaker B:I. I just turned 59.
Speaker A:Oh, that's worse.
Speaker A:I mean, or better.
Speaker A:Is it true that at this age, you have broken a world's record in the 55 to 59 age group swimming?
Speaker B:Well, that's true.
Speaker B:That's true.
Speaker B:I didn't.
Speaker B:I mean, it's not like a world record for all ages, but for the.
Speaker B:Yeah, but for the 59 to 50, 55 to 59 age group.
Speaker B:I broke it when I was 56 in the 200 meter backstroke.
Speaker A:200 meter backstroke?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:That's epic.
Speaker A:And, and, and no doubt, in a year, the 60 to 64 age group record is going to be destroyed by one Rip Esselstyn.
Speaker B:If I have to decide.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's quite a commitment.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:I know the focus and the tenacity of working out regularly and, you know, just the, The.
Speaker B:The rate, the amount of race pace, efforts you have to do and practice.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So your body knows, like, when the gun goes off how to do that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Oh, well, it's.
Speaker A:It's just so gratifying to me.
Speaker A:I mean, first of all, I admire what you've done, and I understand the focus and the persistence and.
Speaker A:And the genetic ability coupled with the dedication and work.
Speaker A:I mean, it takes everything.
Speaker A:But then also, it's a statement because this is a.
Speaker A:An age group record of how you're aging and the way you're eating and the way you're living is supporting that level of performance in your chosen, you know, sport.
Speaker A:And it's, It's.
Speaker A:It's mind boggling to me.
Speaker A:It's just.
Speaker B: nd boggling to me was back in: Speaker B:And I think at the time you must have been 62 or so, and I was probably in, you know, my 40s, and you, you took me, you schooled me, you soundly scold me and my, and my right elbow was, like, sore for about a month.
Speaker A:I'm sorry.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:But anyway, way to go.
Speaker B:So, yes, I'm.
Speaker A:I'm almost 75 now.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:And I, I can bench press my weight and a half, and I can bench press my weight 30 times.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:Those are just numbers to most people, but in fact, that's pretty rare at my age.
Speaker A:It's pretty rare at any age, really.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:No, that's impressive, especially considering.
Speaker B:So I was, I was looking at some of your old videos when you were probably in your, you know, in your late 20s, early 30s, and after you had written Diet for New America, you were, you were it.
Speaker B:I mean, speaking to thousands of people, documentaries, and you were very thin.
Speaker B:I mean, it is amazing how you have kind of muscled up in your.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You know, I had had polio as a child and was in a wheelchair for a while, and I did get out of it, but I've always had my lower.
Speaker A:Lower body's always had some problems.
Speaker A:I did work at it a lot.
Speaker A:That was my weak spot.
Speaker A:So I wanted to.
Speaker A:You know, a lot of times you're going to be undone by your weak spot, so your Achilles heel.
Speaker A:So you got to put more energy into the place where the weakness is.
Speaker A:And for me, that was my legs.
Speaker A:And so I actually, I did run marathons and I did do a couple of triathlons.
Speaker A:And I.
Speaker A:It was harder for me than for most folks, but I did it.
Speaker A:And then, and then, then at a certain point, my legs became.
Speaker A:They were saying, no, don't do this anymore.
Speaker A:The virus still is in me and I gotta be careful.
Speaker A:But so I said, well, okay, I'll work my upper body then, because my polio situated in my spine in a particular place.
Speaker A:So it was just my lower body.
Speaker A:Some people get it higher in the spine and then you have serious lung problems and it can even go up higher.
Speaker A:And then, I mean, it's death.
Speaker A:So the polio virus is not a good thing.
Speaker A:You don't want it in your body.
Speaker A:Uh, but I've had it.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So that I took a bodybuilding, weightlifting anyway, weight, weight training practice.
Speaker A:Not really to compete or anything, but just, just to feel vitality, to feel strength, to feel myself kind of saying Screw you.
Speaker A:To the aging process a little bit.
Speaker A:And it feels good.
Speaker A:It feels good.
Speaker A:It feels great.
Speaker A:I mean.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:Yeah, and the more you do it, the better you are at it, the more the muscles respond.
Speaker A:The capillary systems grow into the muscles so they're.
Speaker A:They can.
Speaker A:I'm not that big, but I.
Speaker A:When I work out, they.
Speaker A:My muscles get much larger.
Speaker A:And people who, at the gym who know these things say that the difference between the size of my muscles at rest and when they're being fully stressed is greater than what they normally see, even in people.
Speaker A:Much larger and much stronger than me.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I think that's the cardiovascular advantage that we have due to our diets.
Speaker A:I do.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:No, it's funny you mentioned lifting weights.
Speaker B:I've recently started again, too, because my son Cole, who's 14, is getting into swimming and he wants to get stronger.
Speaker B:So we're going to the YMCA about two days a week.
Speaker B:And it feels so good to be like, feel your body getting stronger again.
Speaker B:I haven't lifted in 20 years.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I know that you and Ocean, I think, go to the gym and lift together, too.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, we do.
Speaker A:We always do it together.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Twice a week, sometimes three times a week.
Speaker A:Cool.
Speaker B:So cool.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, you know, here's.
Speaker B:So I thank you so much for, for, for, for talking with me.
Speaker B:You know, I bet you a lot of my audience doesn't know about your fascinating, absolutely fascinating journey.
Speaker B:And I know that you've.
Speaker B:You've told parts of this 2,000 times, but, but I, I want you to tell it, you know, to the extent that it feels right, as if you were telling it for, like, the first time.
Speaker B:Because for a lot of these people, they don't know your story and they don't know how you have literally spent your whole entire life, John, following the call of your conscience, right?
Speaker B:Starting.
Speaker B:Starting with you rebelling against the.
Speaker B:Measuring yourself by your self worth.
Speaker B:Your.
Speaker B:Your self worth, not yourself, your net worth.
Speaker B:And basically telling your father, hey, dad, sorry, I'm not going to go down this path.
Speaker B:And then to where you are today, right?
Speaker B:Like almost 50 something years later.
Speaker B:And now you are partnering with.
Speaker B:With Ocean, doing amazing work with the Food Revolution Network.
Speaker B:And so, I mean it.
Speaker B:I mean, the dots have connected for you because I think you've been so true to yourself and what an amazing life, and it's pretty darn unique and special.
Speaker B:So I, I'd love for you to start wherever you want, and then I'd love to go down this path In a way that's very organic and just feels right.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Well, for those of our viewers who don't know, and I kind of apologize to those of you who do for telling it again, but my dad and my uncle owned Baskin Robbins, the ice cream company.
Speaker A:It was.
Speaker A:They started.
Speaker A:My dad started the company himself.
Speaker A:And then a few years later, my, my uncle Burbaskin married my dad's sister, became my uncle, joined my dad in the company, and it grew and grew and grew and grew and grew and it became the world's largest ice cream company.
Speaker A:While I was a kid, it was a billion dollar company and I'm an only son.
Speaker A:I have two sisters, I don't have brothers.
Speaker A:And my father was quite old school.
Speaker A:He believes, or believed, I should say he believed that men should work and provide for their families and women should not work.
Speaker A:Kind of the old.
Speaker A:I don't know how to explain that, but that, that's his generation, I guess.
Speaker A:But the, the result of that was that the entire weight of his expectations was on me.
Speaker B:You mentioned you had sisters.
Speaker B:Your sisters younger or older than you?
Speaker A:One older, one younger.
Speaker A:Neither were given any opportunity to be part of Baskin Robbins.
Speaker A:If they got married, he would have been happy to offer their husband's jobs.
Speaker A:But he didn't believe.
Speaker A:Now he had some employees who were female, of course.
Speaker A:I mean, but he just had this belief that as a wealthy guy, and he was extremely wealthy, that his daughters should never work, they should be taken care of.
Speaker A:I think it's actually undermining of the strength of women to think that way.
Speaker A:I think it's actually misogynist.
Speaker A:But be that as it may, yeah, that's what he believed.
Speaker A:Yeah, so.
Speaker A:So it was all on me.
Speaker A:And I, I rip.
Speaker A:I loved it.
Speaker A:I, I grew up.
Speaker A:I invented flavors.
Speaker A:I invented one called Jamoka Almond fudge.
Speaker A:That was one of the biggest selling flavors of all time.
Speaker A:I, I grew up.
Speaker A:You know, nobody ever said anything about health and food.
Speaker A:There was no connection in my family between those things, and I didn't know there was.
Speaker A:And so growing I was in Southern California was where I was living, and it's hot there, and ice cream is even more attractive when it's hot out and the weather's hot.
Speaker A:And I ate a ton of it.
Speaker A:I ate ice cream for breakfast.
Speaker A:We had an ice cream cone shaped swimming pool in our backyards.
Speaker A:I just, it's hard almost to explain to people how ridiculous it was.
Speaker B:Sounds like it sounds like something out of Willy Wonka.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:I mean, unlimited Ice cream and, and no awareness at all that this could be unhealthy.
Speaker A:So the result was everybody in the family was fat and ill a lot.
Speaker A:My dad had diabetes.
Speaker A:My uncle Bert Baskin died of a heart attack at the age of 54.
Speaker B:That's young.
Speaker A:And see early on.
Speaker A:And he'd had a series of heart attacks previously, you know, and he was a big, oh, he was, he was a really big guy.
Speaker A:I mean, way too much.
Speaker A:And when he died, I asked my father, do you think there could be a connection between the amount of ice cream he was really big and, and, and the amount of ice cream he would eat and his fatal heart attack?
Speaker A:Yeah, and I didn't mean it in an accusative way.
Speaker A:I just, you know, we're sharing grief here.
Speaker A:My uncle, my dad's partner and brother in law has passed away.
Speaker A:It's not a happy time.
Speaker A:But I'm wanting to get value from the grief.
Speaker A:I mean, I don't want the pain to be in vain.
Speaker A:I want us to get some learning growth out of it somehow.
Speaker A:So I asked my dad, do you think there could be a connection between the amount that he would eat of ice cream and his fatal heart attack?
Speaker A:And my father got upset and he looked at me very sternly and he said, absolutely not.
Speaker A:His ticker just got tired and stopped working.
Speaker A:And I, you know, the words, those were the words he said.
Speaker A:But the energy that he conveyed, his body language, the tone of voice, look on his face, it all said, don't you ever bring that up again.
Speaker A:And it was, it was stern.
Speaker A:And you know, every family has kind of sometimes taboo topics that they can't talk about.
Speaker A:And in my family, the fact that there might be any connection between ice cream that the family.
Speaker A:By this time my dad had sold, manufactured and sold more ice cream than any human being who'd ever lived on planet Earth.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:He didn't want to think the family product was hurting anybody, much less it might have contributed to the death of his partner and brother in law.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:But I felt like, okay, I get that he can't ask that question.
Speaker A:I get that he can't consider that possibility given who he is, given how he, you know, his identity and his income and everything.
Speaker A:But I felt that the fact that he couldn't meant two things to me.
Speaker A:One, I shouldn't ask him to because it's like going to beat your head against the brick watch.
Speaker A:It's going to cause friction between us.
Speaker A:But also I needed to ask not him, but, but people who would really know So I started to consult with the medical literature and started to read.
Speaker A:You know, that was my original impulse is, you know, my uncle died.
Speaker A:What, what, what's.
Speaker A:And my family is in, deep, deep in the ice cream business.
Speaker A:What, what's going on here?
Speaker A:And interestingly enough, at some point in that journey, I came across your dad's remarkable research, early 80s, you know, about, about heart disease and saturation.
Speaker B: t the Cleveland clinic in, in: Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B: was a little bit sooner about: Speaker A:But yeah, well, the two of them were a one, two punch for me because like, oh, this is, this is conclusive.
Speaker A:And I had already known.
Speaker A:I don't want to be, do.
Speaker A:I don't want to sell ice cream if I'm going to sell a product or, you know, if that's my living.
Speaker A:I want it to be something that's going to make people's lives better, not just provide momentary pleasure, immediate gratification.
Speaker A:Ice cream does that.
Speaker A:Of course it does.
Speaker A:We were good at it.
Speaker A:But what the cost of that and it's the long term implications of eating.
Speaker A:I mean an ice cream cone isn't going to kill anybody.
Speaker A:But the more you eat, the more likely you are to have a heart attack.
Speaker A:Like killed my uncle.
Speaker A:The more likely you are to have diabetes, which my father developed extremely serious diabetes.
Speaker A:It would have killed him.
Speaker A:In fact, he had a very, very bad prognosis at one point.
Speaker A:But what happened was his cardiologist had read Died for Numerica when it first came out.
Speaker B:What, what kind of a cardiologist is that?
Speaker B:Cutting edge?
Speaker A:I don't know, but he did.
Speaker B:That's pretty incredible.
Speaker A:I know, I know.
Speaker A:And he was pretty good.
Speaker A:And he, he was more.
Speaker A:A little more open minded than.
Speaker A:Because this is before Kim Williams.
Speaker A:This is before.
Speaker A:Yeah, you know, and, and before Dean Ornish and your dad and all that.
Speaker A:And so, but I guess he'd read some of.
Speaker A:Oh, geez.
Speaker B:Predicate.
Speaker A:Predicate.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:And so this sort of fit with that and enlarged it and he was like he said, but he didn't realize.
Speaker A:He knew my father was obviously.
Speaker A:But he didn't know that the John Robbins who'd written the book was the son of this guy.
Speaker A:And so, but he not knowing, he says to my dad, you know, at this point, the prognosis, all we can do is juggle your medications and try to control some of the side effects, try to make Your few remaining years a little more comfortable.
Speaker A:Because my dad had really, really serious problems.
Speaker A:And that's what the cardiologist said.
Speaker A:And they said, but if you're willing to make really big changes, if you're willing to really alter your lifestyle and what you eat, then there might be a different prognosis for you.
Speaker A:It might be a different outcome.
Speaker A:And my father said, well, what do you mean?
Speaker A:What do I have to do?
Speaker A:What are you asking me here?
Speaker A:He said, well, I think the good start would be for you to read this book.
Speaker A:And he handed him a copy of Diet for a New America, not knowing.
Speaker A:Not knowing that this is his patient's son's book.
Speaker A:He didn't know that, and my dad did because I'd sent him an autographed copy when it first came out, and he didn't read it.
Speaker A:He was already.
Speaker A:He's pretty pissed at me still.
Speaker B:Still?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:He.
Speaker A:He held grudges and.
Speaker A:But now the high priest of Western medicine, that's how my father viewed this guy, had.
Speaker A:Had.
Speaker A:Bless my book.
Speaker A:And he began to read it.
Speaker A:He didn't tell me this was happening.
Speaker A:I found out all about this two years later when he called me and said, you won't believe it, Johnny.
Speaker A:Something really incredible is happening.
Speaker A:You won't believe it.
Speaker A:And I said, what, dad?
Speaker A:And he said, well, it turns out you were right.
Speaker A:And I said, about what?
Speaker A:He said, well, two years ago, I read your book.
Speaker A:And he made these little changes at first, but then he got results.
Speaker A:So he made more changes.
Speaker A:He'd lost 45 pounds.
Speaker A:His.
Speaker A:He was off his blood pressure meds that they told him he'd have to take for the rest of his life and which had serious side effects that he hated.
Speaker A:He had been needing insulin.
Speaker A:Now he didn't even need metformin or any other diabetic pills.
Speaker A:His diabetes had gone into remission completely.
Speaker A:He'd lost a lot of weight that he needed to lose everything.
Speaker A:His eyesight had improved, his circulation to his legs, which the diabetes had.
Speaker A:Had really caused problems to.
Speaker A:Was.
Speaker A:Was.
Speaker A:Was.
Speaker A:Everything was back working great.
Speaker A:And he.
Speaker A:He was thrilled.
Speaker A:And he.
Speaker A:And he said, you wouldn't believe it.
Speaker A:I just never would have believed it.
Speaker A:But you and that Ornish fellow, He didn't know about your dad yet, but he.
Speaker A:He was like, I just can't argue with you anymore.
Speaker A:The results are the results.
Speaker A:And he lived another 20 really healthy years.
Speaker A:RIP.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And during that time, there was a real reproach.
Speaker A:Then he forgave me for not fulfilling his desires relative to the company.
Speaker A:And he ended up having a lot of appreciation for what I did do with my life.
Speaker B:Wow, that must have taken a lot for him to call you and say you were right and what a gift that you gave him by basically your kind of recommendation from him reading that allowed him to live another 20 years.
Speaker A:Yeah, I, I was, I had felt guilty.
Speaker A:He was angry at me.
Speaker A:We didn't, there's a lot of things we didn't see eye to eye on and, and that, that wasn't going to change.
Speaker A:But I thought, you know, that's.
Speaker A:Where's the love?
Speaker A:Where's the mutual respect?
Speaker A:That was kind of gone.
Speaker A:He, he was, he wanted what he wanted.
Speaker A:He was used to getting what he wanted.
Speaker A:He had 10, 000 employees.
Speaker A:Every one of them did exactly what he said when he said to do it.
Speaker A:He, this is a guy was used to very dominating man.
Speaker A:And when his only son rejected his life work, in effect, not that I wanted to make him feel rejected, but I made a decision for my conscience and for my.
Speaker A:I didn't know why I was on earth.
Speaker A:I wanted to find out why I knew it wasn't to make more ice cream and sell more ice cream.
Speaker B:And the quote in the book when you say that your dad told you, you know, maybe Johnny, what bothers me most about you is that you can't, you can't be bought.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Later he, he called me into his office one day and he said, johnny, do you want to know what bothers me the most about you?
Speaker A:I remember thinking, sure, why not?
Speaker A:Of all the things that, how you start a conversation with your son, you know, and, but I thought, well, okay, he wants to tell me, what am I?
Speaker A:Listen.
Speaker A:And then he said, and it was not intended as a compliment, although I took it as one.
Speaker A:He said, everybody else I've ever known has their price except you.
Speaker A:You can't be bought.
Speaker A:And it pisses me off.
Speaker A:I said, well, Dad, I actually can be.
Speaker A:But I'm actually pretty cheap.
Speaker A:I, it's just I, I'm measured in a different coin, you know, and, and this whole idea, the commercialism of our culture that's taken over and made people feel.
Speaker A:I mean, it's, I think it's a disgrace how, how the inequality of wealth that we have, the degree of it.
Speaker A:I mean, it's not, it's not right and it's not healthy and it's not good for anybody.
Speaker A:And the pursuit of wealth for its own sake, the, the, the, the.
Speaker A:And the measurement of who we are as People that we feel bad about ourselves and ashamed if we, if we, if our income isn't to a certain level, I, I just find that degrading to us as human beings.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, there's a Gandhi quote that you have in your book.
Speaker B:There's an, there's enough for everyone's need, but not everyone's greed.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:In the new good life, which, which I can I tell you, I just gobbled that up.
Speaker B:I mean, that was so awesome.
Speaker B:And I obviously want to talk about that.
Speaker B:Let me, let me ask you this, John.
Speaker B:I just, I'm just fascinated.
Speaker B:Did you grow up?
Speaker B:Were you in private schools?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:And then, and then, and then, you know, you went away to college.
Speaker B:And what I found amazing is that you went away to college, but you were like, did you put yourself through college?
Speaker A:I did.
Speaker B:I mean, I think washing dishes and playing poker.
Speaker A:Is that right?
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:And bridge, both.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Incredible.
Speaker B:I mean, so you're, you didn't even ask your parents to pay for your college education?
Speaker A:They wanted to.
Speaker A:I wouldn't let them.
Speaker A:I mean, here's the deal.
Speaker A:I, I, I did go to private schools, and my parents did belong to very expensive country clubs, and they were very rich.
Speaker A:I mean, not, not originally, but as I, Yeah, as I got older, I mean.
Speaker B:Well, you had, you had a yacht that was called the 32nd flavor.
Speaker A:My dad had a yacht.
Speaker A:I didn't.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:Okay, thanks.
Speaker A:Yeah, but, and what I, my, all my parents friends were rich.
Speaker A:I mean, really rich.
Speaker A:They were among the richest people in Southern California and in the world.
Speaker A:And I didn't agree with my dad's politics at all.
Speaker A:And I didn't agree.
Speaker A:I didn't feel good with this conspicuous consumption that I was around all the time.
Speaker A:And at the country clubs, for example, the, they were all white country clubs in those days.
Speaker A:And I knew that I missed.
Speaker A:I just felt wrong to me.
Speaker A:And particularly so because there were a lot of black people around at the country club.
Speaker A:They were all staff.
Speaker A:So you have all the white people being waited on and entitled and you have all the people of color serving.
Speaker A:And I saw the contempt and the disrespect from the wealthy, entitled ones towards the people who were working on their behalf.
Speaker A:And it just rubbed me really the wrong way way I just said, this is just.
Speaker A:I don't want to be around these people.
Speaker A:I don't want to be like them.
Speaker A:And I felt like I want to, I felt actually trapped.
Speaker A:This is hard some maybe to understand, but I felt confined and restricted in this world of wealth and it's all I knew.
Speaker A:I'd grown up with it, and I wasn't comfortable outside it because it's all I knew.
Speaker A:Everything else was unknown to me, and we get scared of what we don't know.
Speaker A:So I was a debate champion in high school, and I was offered scholarships to Harvard and Yale and Princeton and Stanford, all the prestigious private schools.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:And I, I, and I remember thinking, why did you give me a scholarship?
Speaker A:My parents could pay for this in a heartbeat.
Speaker A:You know, they, and they would, they, they valued education.
Speaker A:But I thought, if I go, if I go to one of those schools, I'll probably get a fine education, but I'll be around either privileged white rich kids or a few kids who are on scholarships.
Speaker A:You know that.
Speaker A:But more of the power, the establishment power structure.
Speaker A:These are kids born to elitism, and they don't even know how privileged they are.
Speaker A:And I, I was like, I chose to go to UC Berkeley.
Speaker A:I was just.
Speaker A:I grew up in Southern California, and Berkeley's in Northern California, but the state at those, in those days, if you were a resident of the state, and I was, and if you had the grades, which I did, you could get in.
Speaker A:And, and it was almost free.
Speaker A:It was very, the tuition was very low.
Speaker A:And, and I, I, it isn't anymore.
Speaker A:And that's, that's too bad.
Speaker A:But that's what it was then.
Speaker A:And I was able.
Speaker A:I, so I said, I figured out if I washed dishes 20 hours a week and lived in, in the cheap dorm and didn't have a car, I could, I can make it on my own.
Speaker A:And I did.
Speaker A:And I really wanted to do that, Rip.
Speaker A:I wanted to find out who I was.
Speaker A:Not just the rich kid, the spoiled rich kid.
Speaker A:I was a spoiled rich kid.
Speaker A:I didn't like being that, but that's what I was.
Speaker B:And so did you.
Speaker B:And so obviously, you enjoyed kind of thriving in this environment where you didn't have things handed to you and you had to work for it.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:Welcome to the human race.
Speaker A:I mean, this isn't something special.
Speaker A:It's just normal.
Speaker A:But, but for me, it was a, it was an act of rebellion, really, because, you know, my dad wanted to pay for everything, and he could, and it wouldn't hurt him in any way.
Speaker A:It was not like any sacrifice for him, but I still didn't.
Speaker A:I just, I wanted to be my own person.
Speaker A:And this is what it took for me.
Speaker A:Seems a little extreme to some folks, but for me, it was really and still is really important, honestly, to never forget, like, when I sit down to a meal and say grace, take a moment just to relax and center and, And.
Speaker A:And feel the gratitude I feel to have this food.
Speaker A:I'm also thinking about the farm workers.
Speaker A:I'm thinking about the guys that drove or the women that drove the trucks, the people that dug the wells, all the people whose labor, you know, in the process of food production made it possible.
Speaker A:The companies that are risking their investments and are investing in healthy food.
Speaker A:But, you know, there's some risk in that for them financially.
Speaker A:Everyone's involved is making sacrifices and undertaking efforts.
Speaker A:And I'm.
Speaker A:I'm the.
Speaker A:I'm the recipient of this food and I get to eat it.
Speaker A:Yeah, I paid for it.
Speaker A:But I don't want to forget the people.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I just don't.
Speaker A:And I.
Speaker A:It's really important to me that, you know, my grace, the grace I say, grace our family says, includes everybody whose work, who sweat, whose effort has made this possible.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's a beautiful thing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Where did you meet your wife who.
Speaker B:Who has been such a pillar in your life?
Speaker A:Oh, I'm.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Did you meet.
Speaker A:Did you ever met her?
Speaker B:I did.
Speaker B:I met her at one of the Earth Save events with the Nelsons.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, Dale.
Speaker A:Dale is.
Speaker A:We've been together 55, married for 55 years, and we met in Berkeley in the 60s, where I had chosen to go rather than the private schools.
Speaker A:And she's been the greatest blessing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You can imagine.
Speaker A:I mean, and when.
Speaker A:When she met me, I was still the heir apparent.
Speaker A:And her parents were.
Speaker A:They were, I guess you could call them lower middle class.
Speaker A:Her dad was a schoolteacher.
Speaker A:He'd worked real hard to become a schoolteacher.
Speaker A:And they were pretty intimidated by my parents money.
Speaker A:And they didn't exactly like me.
Speaker A:I was such a rebel.
Speaker A:They were very conformist people, but they.
Speaker A:The one thing that they liked about me was that I was rich.
Speaker A:I came from this family that their.
Speaker A:Their daughter would be, well, you know, well, curved, whatever that.
Speaker A:That is.
Speaker A:And then I go ahead and make the decision I make.
Speaker A:And they were not happy about it at all.
Speaker A:But my wife Dao, she was with me 100.0%.
Speaker A:She didn't waver ever.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:She knew before I made the decision that that's who I was and that that's who she loved and that's who she was.
Speaker A:And that she had, you know, a lot of women that were basically choosing poverty over an inheritance that would probably be in the billions.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And bless her heart, she just was with me completely.
Speaker B:And so I just find it incredible that then you guys went and you bought, you bought a couple of Lakers, an island, I think it was called Salt Spring Island.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And then you were there for a decade.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Built your own little cabin, grew your own food, spent 500 a year.
Speaker A:I mean, that is five years, not just no money.
Speaker B:Incredible, John, absolutely incredible.
Speaker B:I mean, the lessons that you must have learned, the simplicity of life, living in a one room.
Speaker B:I, I can't even imagine it.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Well, that's all we could afford to build.
Speaker A:And it was a one room log cabin.
Speaker A:And, and it was simple and it was rudimentary in some respects.
Speaker A:And I, it was a cold because I grew up in Southern California.
Speaker A:I didn't really understand Canadian winners, but we.
Speaker A:This Salt Spring island is in bc, British Columbia.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:But it was one.
Speaker A:Those were wonderful years.
Speaker A:We did a lot of yoga, we did a lot of meditation, we did a lot of inner work.
Speaker A:We did a lot of soul searching and reflection and mentally, a lot of therapy to try to find out who, who.
Speaker A:Who we really are, you know, as distinct from who our culture says we are or our parents say we are or, you know, who, who do we, who are we here to be?
Speaker A:In other words, what is this, the purpose of this life?
Speaker A:Where did you, where do you think.
Speaker B:You found the, the courage and the introspection to kind of go down that path?
Speaker B:That's not an easy path.
Speaker A:No, it wasn't easy.
Speaker A:It was far from easy.
Speaker A:I liked that part of it.
Speaker A:I just like, you know, with swimming, you got to get in the pool.
Speaker A:You may not feel like it, you may be cold, but if you're going to train at the level that you're training, oh my God.
Speaker A:You have the dedication, the discipline, the perseverance, the persistent.
Speaker A:It's got to be in, you know, and, and difficult things are sometimes the most rewarding things.
Speaker A:And that's one of the things about money.
Speaker A:When people have too much and my.
Speaker A:I, I would say my parents had too much because it becomes more important than relationships with people.
Speaker A:It becomes more important than anything else.
Speaker A:And it makes you lazy because you get used to just other people.
Speaker A:You pay them, they do everything for you.
Speaker A:And I mean, I don't want to come across as overly judgmental.
Speaker A:I know I can be.
Speaker A:But it was painful for me as a child to see my parents living this way and treating people this way and the lack of love in my family.
Speaker A:And I think that that was a real provocation for me to be as extreme as we were.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Because I felt that the, the pursuit of wealth for its own sake was a force, a greed force in our society that was out of hand, was given way too much reward, you know, and was.
Speaker A:Was a form of ecocide.
Speaker A:It would kill the world.
Speaker A:It would, it just would it pollute.
Speaker A:It would devour.
Speaker A:It would.
Speaker A:It was a predatory.
Speaker A:I, I wanted to be a pilgrim on this planet.
Speaker A:Not, not, Not a predator.
Speaker A:I didn't want to be part of the kill the world game.
Speaker A:And I from.
Speaker A:And make a lot of money doing it.
Speaker A:I just.
Speaker A:My dad did that.
Speaker A:And I mean, he provided a lot of momentary pleasure for people with this product for sure, but undermined people's health and it undermined their, Their mental capabilities.
Speaker A:We know that.
Speaker A:And my mother died of dementia.
Speaker A:My mother got dementia quite young, and she also got.
Speaker A:She went blind from macular degeneration.
Speaker B:And was she supportive of, of, of your father eating the way, you know.
Speaker A:She, she was worse than him.
Speaker A:She, she, she wouldn't change.
Speaker A:So when his doctors told him, you know, you want to live, you got to change your ways.
Speaker A:And, and he said, I do want to live and I'll change, even though it's Johnny.
Speaker A:But any.
Speaker B:What a.
Speaker B:What a cruel, cruel trick the universe is playing.
Speaker A:I considered it a form of justice, but okay, yes, karmic.
Speaker A:You know, I wish I could have been on the wall like a fly on the wall in the room when he met with that doctor and seen the look on his face when the doctor handed him my book, because it was a karmic collision, a jarring of worldviews.
Speaker A:And here he, a doctor that he has eminent respect for, frankly, he's putting his life in, in this guy's hands, is telling him he should respect and listen to the voice of his maverick son who rejected his life work.
Speaker A:I mean, this is, it's intense.
Speaker A:And I, I really honor my dad that he was able, despite his identity with ice cream, which was total, that he was able to make these changes.
Speaker A:And he did get much other.
Speaker A:When he did it without my mother's support.
Speaker A:So, for example, he'd get up in the morning and she'd have the staff make bacon and eggs, and he'd say.
Speaker A:The doctor said, that'll kill me.
Speaker A:Can we just.
Speaker A:Could you just ask him to make oatmeal in the pecking order there?
Speaker A:She, she dealt with that staff there, and he didn't.
Speaker A:So I don't.
Speaker A:But, but he wouldn't speak to them directly, so he would ask her to ask them.
Speaker A:She would refuse.
Speaker A:And her way of doing that was to say, and this is painful for me.
Speaker A:But it was the case.
Speaker A:She would say, what?
Speaker A:You tried to be too good for us.
Speaker A:Now you think you're like Johnny.
Speaker A:And when I went to visit them, I mean, she would have the food served to be just what they always ate.
Speaker A:And I wouldn't eat it.
Speaker A:I didn't eat the steaks and all that.
Speaker A:And so I tried to make it easier for her.
Speaker A:I said, look, I'll just go in the kitchen, I'll make tofu or I'll make something for ourself and if you'd like, I'll make some for everybody else if you'd like some.
Speaker A:But if not, I'll just make it for Dale and I are eventually Dale and Ocean and I, our son.
Speaker A:And, and, and, and she said, you will not cook tofu in my kitchen.
Speaker A:That's a quote.
Speaker A:And I was like, okay, I'm not allowed in the kitchen.
Speaker A:But it shows an attitude.
Speaker A:She was not.
Speaker A:And it was painful for me and it was harder for my dad, and he did it anyway.
Speaker A:That's the thing.
Speaker A:She, she, so at breakfast, she wouldn't have the staff and he didn't know his way around the kitchen at all.
Speaker A:He didn't know how to prepare anything.
Speaker A:So he'd go out, he'd just get in his car, go out to a restaurant where he'd get oatmeal and orange juice and stewed prunes and he, you know, didn't bother him in the slightest.
Speaker A:And, and he stayed with it and, and bless his heart, you know, at one point he said, I'm not a card carrying vegetarian, which is a phrase that reminds me of McCarthy talking about card carrying communists.
Speaker A:But, but he said, I don't eat meat anymore, I don't eat ice cream anymore.
Speaker A:Okay, If I'm at a fundraiser and they serve what they serve, I'll, I'll have it.
Speaker A:But other than that, I don't want to be a bother.
Speaker A:Other than that, you know, I'm almost like you, Johnny.
Speaker A:And he said that with a sense of respect and appreciation, you know, and it was like, it made my day.
Speaker A:I, I, I never expected my dad to change as much as he did.
Speaker A:And we had a lot of reproach, man, and it was a lot of love in the end between us.
Speaker A:And I, I really appreciate, I mean I, I inherited some characteristics from him and qualities that I appreciate and I, I'm grateful for that.
Speaker A:Yeah, he's a manifester.
Speaker B:Tell me this, when you decided to hatch diet for New America.
Speaker B:Were you, were you living on Salt Spring island or did you move from there?
Speaker A:We had just moved.
Speaker A:We'd stayed on.
Speaker A:We had lived on Salt Spring for 10 years and then we ocean had been reached the age of five and he needed more kids.
Speaker A:We were very isolated on the island.
Speaker A:We lived in a remote corner of it and there weren't any other children in the, in the vicinity, so, so we moved to a little town on a bigger island.
Speaker A:The bigger island being Vancouver island, the town being Victoria, which is the capital of bc.
Speaker A:It's a real, it's a town, it's a city, small city.
Speaker A:And we lived there for five years.
Speaker A:And then when he was 10, we moved to California and that's when I wrote Died for New America.
Speaker B:And you, and you spent two and a half years writing that book.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Like 40 to 60 hours a week you spend on that book.
Speaker A:I, I did, I did RIP you know, this is before the age of the computer.
Speaker A:I had a typewriter.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I couldn't afford an electric typewriter.
Speaker A:I wanted one, but I did it on the old fashioned typewriter where you, you know, you know, we, we, we.
Speaker A:And it was ironic because we had, we had no money in those.
Speaker A:Dale was cleaning houses and also selling water filters.
Speaker A:But most of the income came while I was writing the book.
Speaker A:I had had a bodywork practice before that.
Speaker A:I'd learned a form of deep tissue work and work with my hands with people like Rolfing.
Speaker B:Is it like Rolfing?
Speaker A:I actually trained in Rolfing, among other techniques.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Ida Rolfs developed this form called structural integration.
Speaker A:But there's a lot of different forms of hands on work that help people feel freer in their bodies and more connected to their bodies.
Speaker A:And I did that and that's how I made our living until I stopped to write the book and I couldn't do both at the same time.
Speaker A:And Dayo started cleaning houses then.
Speaker A:And for, I think for about three and a half years she ran Shiny Bright house cleaning service.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:Incredible.
Speaker A:And, and we got by.
Speaker B:So do you know how many copies has Diet for New America sold?
Speaker B:Is it like over 2 million?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:I mean that's 30 something languages and.
Speaker B:Yeah, it is phenomenal.
Speaker B:I mean that you really, that book launched the modern health food movement.
Speaker B:I mean it literally did.
Speaker B:I mean it was like the linchpin of the zeitgeist.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:That made this all happen because I think you for the first time connected all the dots as far as.
Speaker B:Well, this is the best way to eat for health and the environment.
Speaker B:And if you really want to be compassionate for the animals.
Speaker B:I mean, it was such a.
Speaker B:Such a world peace.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:To address world hunger issues.
Speaker A:I mean, right now, you know, we have this terrible event happening in Ukraine and, and it's terrifying, actually, and heartbreaking.
Speaker A:And one of the, one of the aspects of it that people aren't too aware of, I mean, there's lots that people did.
Speaker A:The brutality that it's.
Speaker A:But Russia and Ukraine have been responsible for a significant percentage of the world's wheat and fertilizer.
Speaker A:And some of the world's largest wheat importers have depended on Ukraine and Russia for their sources of wheat.
Speaker A:Egypt gets 85% of its wheat from those two countries, for example.
Speaker A:And needless to say, there's no wheat being grown in Ukraine today.
Speaker A:I mean, what would have been wheat fields or battlefields?
Speaker A:And the people who would have been harvesting the wheat and working in the fields are either in the front lines or they're hiding in basements or they're homeless.
Speaker A:I mean, the country's not capable of its normal agriculture.
Speaker A:And Russia is producing wheat, they're growing wheat.
Speaker A:But there's way of getting wheat to the world, to export it to the world is through the Black Sea, and the sanctions have closed that off.
Speaker A:So basically, Ukrainian and Russian wheat, which has been a mainstay of the world's wheat consumption, is.
Speaker A:Are out of commission.
Speaker A:And we're already seeing food prices going up, but we're going to see that more and more, I'm afraid.
Speaker A:And for people in the Western Europe or people in the United States who can afford it, it's going to be annoying and inconvenient because prices are going to go up.
Speaker A:But for people in a lot of other countries and for some people in, in the United States and Western Europe, this is not just going to be an inconvenience and an annoyance.
Speaker A:It's going to be something far more serious.
Speaker A:And we.
Speaker A:We've had a problem with world hunger for years, and we've been making inroads, We've been growing, we've been reducing slowly the number of hungry and starving people on Earth.
Speaker A:But that.
Speaker A:That curve that we've been bending in the right direction, slowly, unfortunately, but we've been bending it in the right direction is suddenly going to and in the wrong direction.
Speaker A:And that's a tragedy, and it's one of the many tragedies ensuing from what Putin's doing.
Speaker A:But here's the thing.
Speaker A:When you eat lower on the food chain, you're actually consuming less Food by far.
Speaker A:Because all the grain and the fields and the water and the energy and, and what it takes to produce meat to feed these animals in the feedlots is so egregious that your ecological footprint when you eat low on the food chain, when you eat a plant based diet is so much lower, it's so much less.
Speaker A:And therefore that allows those fields to be used to grow food for people.
Speaker A:We could feed everybody on Earth a healthy plant based diet, I mean lots of vegetables, lots of fruits, and do it at a cost effective way and use a quarter of the land we now use and then those other three quarters of the land that we now use for meat production.
Speaker A:Yeah, could be rewilded, could be reforested, could be put into wind farms.
Speaker A:There's a million things they could have been, could do with them that would fight global warming, that would increase the beauty on Earth and start to restore the habitat for species that we've been eviscerating.
Speaker A:I mean there's so many good things that can happen and even this crisis and you know, I wish it didn't take this, but what's going on in Ukraine is, it's terrifying but it's yet another moment in our, that could be a teaching moment for us, a learning moment for us.
Speaker A:And we could say, well we, we don't need Russia's gas and oil if we go, go into non polluting, seriously and into wind and solar and so forth.
Speaker A:We don't need to all this extra food if we stop feeding our grain to animals that are being treated so horribly.
Speaker A:So people whose cholesterol levels are already too high can have hamburgers that are quarter percent cheaper.
Speaker A:I mean.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:Well.
Speaker B:Everything you just said is exactly why we do need a, a food revolution and why, you know, the work that you and Ocean are doing is absolutely so, so important.
Speaker B:And I want to get to that, but before I do, there's something that I read that I just adored.
Speaker B:I tried to look it up to find it and I couldn't.
Speaker B:And that is when Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with Robin Leach came knocking on your door.
Speaker B:And we're like, really?
Speaker B:This is the place we're supposed to be filming.
Speaker B:And you tried with all your might to tell this woman, no, I am not interested, I don't want to do it.
Speaker B:But, but she talked you into it and it ended up being a really like spectacular experience.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, well, yeah.
Speaker A:I'll tell you what happened.
Speaker A:This, I get a phone call one day, we're living in this we're not on the island anymore, but we're still living very.
Speaker A:We had.
Speaker A:Didn't have any money reps, so we lived very simply.
Speaker A:And, and, but they don't know this at, at Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
Speaker A:They assume otherwise.
Speaker A:And for some reason they call me and say they want to do a segment on me.
Speaker A:And I say, you must have the wrong John Robbins.
Speaker A:I'm the opposite of everything that you're about.
Speaker A:I mean, you guys exalt conspicuous consumption.
Speaker A:You glorify the shallowest parts of people.
Speaker A:You know, you're an embarrassment as a show.
Speaker A:I wish you didn't exist.
Speaker A:And thanks for the.
Speaker A:Thanks for the call.
Speaker A:And she.
Speaker A:But she wasn't.
Speaker A:She was nonplussed, believe it or not.
Speaker A:She said, okay, I know, I know, you're right.
Speaker A:You're right.
Speaker A:She says, but once a year we're allowed to do a different kind of show.
Speaker A:And a bunch of us here on the staff have read your book and we think it's great and we want to publicize it, help, help get your message out to some people who otherwise would maybe not ever hear it.
Speaker A:And, and our audience is that.
Speaker A:And she said, we are allowed to do a different kind of show once a year, and that's the show we have in mind for you.
Speaker A:And I said, well, what is it?
Speaker A:Because I know what your usual show is, and there's no show of that nature for you in my life.
Speaker A:And she said, well, we're allowed to do a show about rich people who are using their money for good things.
Speaker A:And I said, well, that's good.
Speaker A:I'm delighted that you do that once a year.
Speaker A:I wish you did that every show, and once a year you did your stupid show.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But still, I have to tell you, I'm not rich.
Speaker A:I'm really, really, really not rich.
Speaker A:And yeah, that may surprise you, but it's the truth.
Speaker A:And, and she said, well, we love your book, you could have Been Rich.
Speaker A:And I said, yeah, Lifestyles of the could have Been Rich and Famous.
Speaker A:That's like, who is it?
Speaker A:You know?
Speaker A:But she.
Speaker A:She just won me over.
Speaker A:I mean, I told her the truth.
Speaker A:I. I explained while we were living.
Speaker A:It didn't deter her.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:So I agreed.
Speaker A:And then on the appointed time and day, this van shows up.
Speaker A:It's a huge van and the gaudiest possible script on the side of it.
Speaker A:It's Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So the cameraman shows knocks on the door and I answer and I say hi.
Speaker A:And he says, first Words out of his mouth raise, excuse me, we have the wrong place.
Speaker A:We're looking, and the address is right there, right next to the door.
Speaker A:He says, we're looking for.
Speaker A:And he tells me our address, and it's right there.
Speaker A:He can't miss it.
Speaker A:It's right by the door.
Speaker A:And I said, well, this is whatever the address was.
Speaker A:And, and he said, well, we must have the wrong address.
Speaker A:Then I said, we're looking for John Robbins.
Speaker A:Do you happen to know where he lives?
Speaker A:I said, I'm John Robbins.
Speaker A:This is where I live.
Speaker A:And come in, we're expecting you welcome.
Speaker A:And he just stands there at the door and he looks in because I opened the door, you know, to let him in, and he says, this is where you live?
Speaker A:And I said, yes, and you're welcome.
Speaker A:I'm thinking, if you don't want to do it, don't do it.
Speaker A:But I.
Speaker A:And, and, and he says, well, I'm sorry, excuse me, it wasn't what we expected.
Speaker A:This is nothing like the shit places we usually go.
Speaker A:And I said, I know.
Speaker A:And I'm thinking, where's the woman that told me that about this is the different kind of show and everything where she.
Speaker A:Because she wasn't with them.
Speaker A:But he, he said, well, yeah, we.
Speaker A:It is a different kind of show.
Speaker A:I'm not sure.
Speaker A:I just do the camera work.
Speaker A:I don't know anything.
Speaker A:So the people come and I'm.
Speaker A:I'm assured that it's going to be a better show than their usual thing.
Speaker A:And, and the funny thing is they did another lovely thing.
Speaker A:They went to Earth save and interviewed some of the people there.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And they actually had me on their show quoting Thoreau saying where he said, I make myself rich by making my wants.
Speaker A:Few lovely maybe, you know, statement.
Speaker A:And on that show of all shows, you know, and at the very end of the segment with me, on me, Robin, they show.
Speaker A:This is.
Speaker A:This is so beautiful.
Speaker A:They show the photograph of the whole Earth from space, you know, this gorgeous globe.
Speaker A:Brilliant.
Speaker A:I don't know if you know, but the Earth is more perfectly spherical, geometrically speaking, than a billiard ball and more smooth than even with Mount Everest.
Speaker A:And it is that.
Speaker A:It's a geometric marvel and a cosmic marvel.
Speaker A:And there it is from space, the whole world.
Speaker A:And Robin Leach, of all people, says, this man's life goes to show that he who believes, he who dies with the most toys wins, doesn't see the whole picture.
Speaker A:And there's the picture of the whole Earth.
Speaker A:And I thought they did it.
Speaker A:They did what she said they would do and it was in with some other people who did, who were, were rich people, were doing good things with their money.
Speaker A:And I thought if we have reached, this is a weird place to reach.
Speaker A:This is not the leading edge of consciousness of any kind in any way.
Speaker A:You know, it's, it's really.
Speaker A:But even there, there was an openness to a more life affirming message than this usual crap that they did.
Speaker A:And, and I, and I felt pretty happy about it and I was glad I did it.
Speaker A:And, and the interesting thing was when it came time they, they were there for a couple days, the crew and when they left the, the cameraman who first knocked on the door took me aside and said, you know, we've never been to anything like this before.
Speaker A:I said, yeah, I gather.
Speaker A:And we at lunchtime, Dayo had made lunch for everybody and she said that's the first time that's ever happened to us.
Speaker A:We go to mansions and there's plenty of staff and we go out for lunch, but no one's ever offered us lunch before.
Speaker A:And I said, well I'm sorry that's you've been made to feel that you didn't get that degree of hospitality, but glad you did here and, and we sure enjoyed having you.
Speaker A:And, and he said, you know, the food is new to me but you've really, you've reached my heart and I want to, I'm going to tell everybody I know about this and you know, it's, it's this feeling of, it's, it's, I, it almost makes me cry.
Speaker A:I just feel so grateful and humbled to be part of spreading a message that you are too ripped so, so beautifully and have been in your dad, your family for so long that can help people so much.
Speaker A:What a privilege we have.
Speaker A:And I, I had another kind of privilege in my early life.
Speaker A:You know the standards, financial privilege.
Speaker A:And I gotta tell you, there is no comparison.
Speaker A:This is the real thing.
Speaker A:This is what makes my heart sing.
Speaker A:This is what makes me want to give thanks to life.
Speaker B:Well, so I have some quotes that are in your book that really touched me and one of them is Albert Schweitzer, that's the Nobel Peace Prize winner that said the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Exactly what you just said.
Speaker B:Exactly what you said.
Speaker A:Yep, exactly.
Speaker A:And, and it is.
Speaker A:Not everyone gets that a lot of people have to work for a living doing things that aren't life giving to them, and they may even hate and that deplete them, you know, drain them.
Speaker A:And I want us to restructure our society.
Speaker A:I mean, if I had my way, which I don't, but, you know, I'd like to see us.
Speaker A:And that's where the wealth inequality issue strikes me, is because too much money, way too much money is concentrating at the top.
Speaker A:And then everybody pays a price for that.
Speaker A:And then, you know, I don't know where our compassion is, but we better find it.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker B:Well, I think you say in the book that our society needs to regain its soul.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And we have this ethic of that the goal is unlimited consumption.
Speaker A:I would love to see our goal be unlimited compassion.
Speaker A:You know, why don't we work to create a world where it's safe for people's hearts, safe for their love, safe for their joy, safe for their.
Speaker A:Their peace?
Speaker A:You know, that.
Speaker A:That's the world where I think the human spirit would most.
Speaker A:Most thrive.
Speaker A:And who knows what problems we could then solve if we weren't wasting our.
Speaker A:So much of our genius and our resources on stupid and shallow things.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:I think you're right.
Speaker B:I think it would be limitless.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:What we could do.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:If.
Speaker B:If you're okay with it, I'd love to ask you a little bit about the new Good Life, because to me, what you've done there, it's in Diet for New America.
Speaker B:And they both have the word new.
Speaker B:Maybe that's very intentional, but, you know, so Diet for New America, you kind of are trying to teach people a new way of.
Speaker B:Of looking at your food choices.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And the way that people are.
Speaker B:Vast majority of people are doing it.
Speaker B:It's just.
Speaker B:It's perverse, it's unhealthy, and it is killing us on the planet.
Speaker B:And with the new Good Life, to me, you've taken another subject that's almost as powerful as food, if not more so, which is money.
Speaker B:And you're trying to get us to look at money in a whole new sense and lens.
Speaker B:That, again, to me, is not perverse.
Speaker B:But is it.
Speaker B:It's a very healthy relationship with money.
Speaker B:So I. I'd love to talk about that, but I think it's imperative that if you don't mind, you talk about what happened to you and basically losing all the wealth that you had accumulated.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Going down your true path.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Because of a crappy decision that somebody that you trusted, you know, made.
Speaker B:And you, unfortunately, were the bearer of that financial ruin.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, so died For New America sold millions of copies and I became a thing and I did a lot of lectures around.
Speaker A:I was on touring for about 10 years and I regularly had 2,000, 3,000 people at my events.
Speaker A:And it was, and we, we, and part of that was we, we made some money.
Speaker A:It wasn't our goal, but it came with the territory and I was grateful for it.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:And it was a successful author, you know, and speaker.
Speaker A: And then in: Speaker B:That in and of itself in America is kind of unusual.
Speaker A:I know, I know.
Speaker B:And so, I mean, and I think it's so awesome that you guys did that and are.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Doing that.
Speaker A:Well, no, we, we.
Speaker A:Although close.
Speaker A:Close.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Ocean now lives 10 minutes away and but his family outgrew this property and we, you know, got it.
Speaker A:And I think he wanted, he didn't want to live on his parents property anymore, his parents house anymore.
Speaker A:I think he had some.
Speaker A:But we would have kept him.
Speaker A:I mean, there's no.
Speaker A:But we were living together and his wife got pregnant and then she gave birth to extremely premature twins.
Speaker A:Extremely premature.
Speaker A:And that's not a good thing.
Speaker A:And that's.
Speaker A:So they are, they're now 21.
Speaker A:They're, they're autistic and I don't just mean on the spectrum.
Speaker A:They are autistic.
Speaker A:They're, they're, they've had some severe handicaps and challenges and it became really clear right away that these kids are going to need a lot of help.
Speaker A:And there's two of them.
Speaker A:So it was a really good thing that Dale and I were there because this is more than two, any two parents can handle two special needs babies.
Speaker A:And there were a lot of life or death incidents that occurred when they were young, seizures, all kinds of things.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker A:A certain friend of mine who was on the Earthsave board of directors at the time and a very wealthy attorney who did pro bono work for Earth Save at the time said to me, you're, you're, you knew.
Speaker A:He met the kids and he said, you know, they're, it's going to take a lot of money, child care and all kinds of support services.
Speaker A:And it's.
Speaker A:And I said, yeah.
Speaker A:And he said, I have an investment and he's a very wealthy guy.
Speaker A:He's a very heart centered guy and he very much was part of Earth Saves Growth.
Speaker A:He did a lot of pro bono work for Earth Save as I think I said.
Speaker A:And he did.
Speaker A:And it's very appreciated he said, and he said, if you, if you mortgage your property to the max, I can take that money and invest it and you'll be paying.
Speaker A:I think in those days, I think our mortgage was, I may, I may have it.
Speaker A:Not right exactly, Rip, but I think it was 5 or 6%.
Speaker B:It sounds about right.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And, and I think he said we could get 8% from him.
Speaker A:So there's a little difference, a little margin of 2%, which would be income.
Speaker A:He said, I've been doing this for 35 years, no one has ever lost a penny with me.
Speaker A:And I said, well, what is the investment?
Speaker A:And he said, it's pretty hard to explain.
Speaker A:It has to do with arbitrage.
Speaker A:What I thought it was so sophisticated, it's over my head.
Speaker A: know this at the time, but in: Speaker A:He said, madoff's been arrested.
Speaker A:And I said, who's Madoff?
Speaker A:I was, I'd never heard that name before.
Speaker A:And he said, well, that's where all our money's been invested.
Speaker A:And I said, what does this mean?
Speaker A:He says, it's gone.
Speaker A:And we had mortgaged our property to the hilt and all of our savings and it was stupid.
Speaker A:You know, there's this old saying, don't put all your eggs in one basket.
Speaker A:Well, I borrowed eggs to put in that basket.
Speaker A:I mean, we mortgaged our property to the max and I trusted him and it was a mistake and we lost all our money and now we had this huge mortgage and because our property was mortgage to the max and Rip, the most amazing thing happened.
Speaker A:I, I, this dear friend, Patty Brightman, you may know.
Speaker A:Do you know Patty?
Speaker B:I don't, I don't think I do.
Speaker A:Well, she's a long time vegan activist.
Speaker A:Her and a lovely woman.
Speaker A:And she'd been a, a book agent in New York and had been an agent for one of my books.
Speaker A:That's how I'd met her.
Speaker A:And she asked me if she could.
Speaker A:She said, there's a lot of people that would like to help you, John, if they knew, would you please allow me to tell them?
Speaker A:I was very ashamed and embarrassed, but I felt where she was coming from and it was really good place and I, I said okay.
Speaker A:And she then did, she put the word out about what had happened to us.
Speaker A:And a lot of people sent money and some wealthy people gave us some significant loans.
Speaker B:You know what it sounds just like, it sounds just like the what's the one with, with Jimmy Stewart?
Speaker B:The Christmas one?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:You know what I'm talking about.
Speaker A:Yeah, I do.
Speaker A:I do.
Speaker A:That, that famous old movie.
Speaker B:Yeah, right now.
Speaker B:But anyway, yeah, he loses the money and everybody comes and they, he, they save the day for him.
Speaker B:Anyway, is that kind of what happened?
Speaker A:It was, it was kind of what happened.
Speaker A:And, and although, you know, it helped, we still had the boys though, the twins and their needs and.
Speaker B:It's a wonderful life.
Speaker B:It's a wonderful life.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:But I was, I'm still humbled by the, by the generosity that came our way and the love.
Speaker A:And so then, then Ocean, who had been running a Nonprofit organization for 20 years called YES, called YES, Youth for Environmental Sanity.
Speaker A:It was a project of Earth Save and, and he, it was doing great work, decided to go into the for profit world kind of, and, and start Food Revolution Network.
Speaker A:And he and I then, since that day, that was in 20.
Speaker B: The: Speaker A: that we basically got: Speaker A:And we're doing our 11th annual Food Revolution Network Summit in a week or so, starts on the 23rd.
Speaker A:And the email, I mean the link has just gone up, the Internet link, foodrevolutionsummit.org if you want to know about it.
Speaker A:And we've been doing this for all these years and your dad's been a good guest on it.
Speaker A:You've been a guest on it a lot.
Speaker A:Dean Ornish has been a guest who we've already mentioned.
Speaker A:A lot of the main spokespeople for a whole food plant based diet have been on it and my delight to interview these folks and get their message out to a growing audience.
Speaker A:We have 800,000 members now.
Speaker A:For the last four or five years, all of our summits have had at least 300 or 350,000 participants.
Speaker A:It is at this point in time the largest gathering of food conscious people on the planet.
Speaker A:And it's, it's now the, the venue that we're using An Ocean basically took the thing I did in writing a book and in lecturing Turing and lecturing onto the Internet, took it global in that way.
Speaker A:And it is global.
Speaker A:We have participants from 180 countries.
Speaker A:We have, it's, it's a, it's, it's growing and happening and I owe a lot to him for that.
Speaker A:He's, he's, he's amazing.
Speaker A:And the remarkable thing, you alluded to this earlier, that my dad wanted so badly for his son to follow in his footsteps and do his, his business with him.
Speaker A:He wanted me to become the CEO of Baskin Ramsey, wanted me to inherit it.
Speaker A:And, you know, he got the one kid that said no.
Speaker A:I felt bad about it.
Speaker A:He, you know, most kids, he wasn't selling plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons.
Speaker A:You know, he's selling ice cream.
Speaker A:Most people think of that as a happy thing, but he didn't get that.
Speaker A:Maybe I gave him a bigger gift in the long run.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Because I have that additional 20 years.
Speaker A:But the fact that Ocean chose it wasn't my idea.
Speaker A:It's Ocean's idea to work with me.
Speaker A:I would have never asked that of him, never expected of him.
Speaker A:But he, I don't know.
Speaker A:I imagine your dad feels similarly about you, the sense that you've chosen to align yourself with and further his work.
Speaker B:Well, you know, but yeah, it's a beaut.
Speaker B:It's a beautiful thing.
Speaker B:And obviously it's such an important cause that we're all, you know, joining hands and trying to, trying to further.
Speaker B:But I look at, you know, you and Ocean and my father and myself and my sister Jane and my mother, and you look at the, the Campbells.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker B:And all the.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yep, yep, yep.
Speaker B:The whole f, the whole Campbell family.
Speaker A:Nelson.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker B:And, and, and, and Furman and his children.
Speaker B:And I mean, it just, you know, I think that as children to people like yourself and, and my father and Colin Campbell and, and, and everybody, you can't help but be drawn into this, this fear of, of truth and the importance that it has right now and for this civilization.
Speaker B:So, but it was, but, so it's so appropriate that you and, and, and Ocean have each other and have this, this gift that you're now giving to the world that started with what you, you know, what you did.
Speaker B:God, a long time ago.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I, I wrote DNA in the mid eight, mid eighties.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So the new good life.
Speaker B:I just love for you to talk a little bit more about, like, finding, you know, this new freedom, a new truth, a new joy, and how, especially since we've become such a consumeristic, you.
Speaker A:Know, country, it's just, yeah, we've over, we've commercialized everything.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I, I, so I had this unique journey.
Speaker A:I, I was born into wealth.
Speaker A:As I grew up, it became great wealth.
Speaker A:I went from there to chosen.
Speaker A:You know, there's this old phrase, rags to riches.
Speaker A:I was born into riches, went into chosen rags, if you will, and then earned riches.
Speaker A:Not, not the kind of money my parents had nearly but, but, but well off decent.
Speaker A:We were, we felt secure.
Speaker A:And then to unchosen rags because of the theft that Madoff was.
Speaker A:And people hear about Madoff and yes, most of his clients, if that's even the right word, victims were wealthy people.
Speaker A:But not everybody was.
Speaker A:And we, we weren't, we weren't living high on the hog and we weren't getting, I heard of these people getting exorbitant interest rates.
Speaker A:I, I don't know anything about that.
Speaker A:We got 8% and in those days, in the years that we were invested, which is.01 to 08, the stock market was going up more than 8% every year.
Speaker A:So it didn't feel like this is extravagant or disproportionate in some way.
Speaker A:Didn't, didn't.
Speaker A:Wasn't a red flag to me, maybe it should have been, but it wasn't.
Speaker A:And so now we're at unchosen rags because we were in trouble.
Speaker A:And then through Food Revolution Network and working with Ocean, working our way slowly back to.
Speaker A:I don't know if riches is the right word, but security.
Speaker A:And it's been quite the roller coaster for me and I think I've learned things through experiencing life through these different lenses from these different perspectives.
Speaker A:And one of the things I've learned is that a poverty sucks.
Speaker A:Poverty totally sucks if you the only people that don't know that are the ultra rich and who've never known it.
Speaker A:And the second thing is we make too much.
Speaker A:We make money too important.
Speaker A:And that's one of the reasons why poverty sucks, is so we don't invest in things that are community based.
Speaker A:We don't invest in public health, we don't invest in parks and subsidizing healthy food and contributing to the health of our people, all of our people.
Speaker A:We privatize things and then only the rich can afford this or that and everybody else is just fucking left, sorry, left in a place that shouldn't be left.
Speaker A:And it's disgraceful.
Speaker A:And what do we do then?
Speaker A:That's the system.
Speaker A:We want to change it if we can, but you know, it's a pretty big system.
Speaker A:So what can we do?
Speaker A:One of the things we can do is deshame.
Speaker A:We can take the shame out of poverty.
Speaker A:We can take the shame out of having less than the richest lifestyles of the rich and famous.
Speaker A:And we can start to say what really?
Speaker A:Because I think that belief system that you are as wealthy as you have money, that your net worth is, is your self worth, deeply impoverishes us as People, I think it's, it's a, it's a tragedy to our hearts and, and our relationships and, and that's something we can change.
Speaker A:We, we can change and we can learn to, to, to live richly with less possessions.
Speaker A:And that's something you won't learn from commercial culture because everybody's trying to sell you something.
Speaker A:And the idea of buying less and living on less beautifully, graciously, I would even say exuberantly, you learn to appreciate things like going for walks and, and how I, you know, I wish we had more parks and where people in cities have more places where they could walk that'd be more safe and beautiful and life giving.
Speaker A:But I'll find the parks, I'll look for the places.
Speaker A:The joys of being under the stars at night.
Speaker A:That's free.
Speaker A:You do have to be away from city lights to see them.
Speaker A:Yeah, and there's a corollary to that.
Speaker A:The joy of living a healthy life, be in a healthy body because you've prioritized healthy food.
Speaker A:I mean, it's hard to explain to someone who's never had that experience how great it feels.
Speaker A:And it's, and it's a, it's an inner richness.
Speaker A:And, and when you have it, when you have that sense of vitality within your own self, you're not as, as, as susceptible to the lures and the predations of commercial culture.
Speaker A:They want, they want your money.
Speaker A:They don't care about what it does to you.
Speaker A:They don't care if what they give you or provide for you is of value to you or to life.
Speaker A:They don't mostly, and that's a shame.
Speaker A:But when you learn to be happy with last year a little bit Thoreau, you know, it takes some of the sting.
Speaker A:It takes the sting out of being, not having more.
Speaker A:And it also does open you up to the, the beauties and joys that aren't commercialized, that don't require you don't buy them.
Speaker A:You avail yourself of them.
Speaker A:You, you create them so you could.
Speaker A:I mean, some people can sing.
Speaker A:You don't have to have money to sing.
Speaker A:I have a terrible voice and I sing.
Speaker A:You know, you don't have to be.
Speaker A:Keep it.
Speaker A:You know, I, I sing mostly alone and with my wife.
Speaker A:She puts up with me.
Speaker A:She, she's great.
Speaker A:But I, I'm.
Speaker A:Nobody would pay me sing.
Speaker A:They'd pay to leave the room if I started to sing.
Speaker A:But I like it.
Speaker A:I love it.
Speaker A:And why, you know, if I'm not gonna, if I'm not inflicting it on somebody else.
Speaker B:Well, I, you know, I, I've never gone to the extreme that you have as far as simplifying, simplifying your life.
Speaker B:But I feel like I've, I've done a pretty good job with it, right?
Speaker B:And like, just to like, open up with you about this, like, I've never been driven by money.
Speaker B:It's never been the thing that's motivated me in any decision that I've, that I've made.
Speaker B:Like, for example, after graduating from college, University of Texas, everybody was telling me, oh, you got to get a real job.
Speaker B:And I was like, I like to compete.
Speaker B:I'm going to do triathlons.
Speaker A:And I was dirt poor.
Speaker B:I was living, I was living with this really, really nice woman who rented out a bedroom and a bathroom in her house.
Speaker B:And I was paying $150 a month.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Which is pretty cheap.
Speaker B: This is: Speaker A:Yep, got it.
Speaker B:And then after doing that for a decade, that's when I was like, okay, I'm done gallivanting around doing the triathlon.
Speaker B:So then I decided that I would become a firefighter.
Speaker B:And I was making 22,000, right.
Speaker B:You know, as a cadet, my first year out.
Speaker B: home and we lived in it until: Speaker B:And we were never as happy.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And that's where I am right now.
Speaker B:Where I'm talking to you is this and that.
Speaker B:We've turned this into basically the, the Plantstrong world headquarters.
Speaker B:But, and I also, like, you adore nature.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And there's nothing I love more than being out mountain biking, hiking, going to the national parks.
Speaker B:That is where I really, like, feel so alive and truly happy to my core.
Speaker B:And so everything that you're writing about in the new good life.
Speaker B:I've never owned a new car.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:I always buy used cars, drive until they drop dead.
Speaker B:I only buy things that I can afford.
Speaker B:You know, this house, we paid it off as fast as we could.
Speaker B:And just, just where, where are your priorities?
Speaker B:And is it driving around a shiny car, you're paying 800amonth.
Speaker B:Would it just make it seems so wrong?
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:You know, so anyway, this so resonated with me and just the way, you know, Diet for New America resonated with me.
Speaker B:And I just, I want people out there that are wondering, you know, that are, that are struggling with their, their finances, with happiness to take a look at this.
Speaker B:Because to me, it will totally level set you as far as, and, and what you talk about in the book, John, is financial freedom is really, it's the new frugality.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:And, and I think that's a really wonderful point.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:And, and, and I thank you for telling me that your, your personal story, you know, and I, I think you, you made a choice for, for, for the richness of your life.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Versus the bank account kind of richness.
Speaker A:And again I always say this, I always need to balance it with we, Nobody is glorifying poverty here.
Speaker A:There's nothing fun about not being able to feed your family or being able to house yourself.
Speaker A:But there was also nothing fun about not being able to say enough.
Speaker A:And be it food, the people who can't say enough, I'm done, I've had enough, you know, end up paying a pretty big price for that, that, that appetite.
Speaker A:And similarly with, with material goods, if, if you can't say enough at a certain point and know what that is for you, where your comfort zone is, then you're, then you're.
Speaker A:The commercial culture will just eat you up.
Speaker A:And, and when you were able to say I'm okay, we're living in 800 square foot places and we're going to raise our kids here with our dogs and, and we're going to be happy here.
Speaker A:You know there's something about actually the proximity.
Speaker A:Oh, that's good.
Speaker A:I mean it's challenging at times.
Speaker A:It's challenged for sure, unless you guys are saints.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:No, yeah, but, but you know I, I grew up in mansions where there's all these unused rooms, unused wings.
Speaker A:My, my parents at one point the, just the two of them live, I know this long after I've left and our kids have left lived in a 14,000 square foot home that had three, three car garages and had 42 televisions, two people.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So I mean for me, yeah, the pendulum swung real hard in the other direction.
Speaker A:I don't necessarily, I don't ever recommend what we did, you know, the level of, we took it.
Speaker A:But I'm an extreme guy and if I, if I had the physical capacity I, I would run the triathlons and swim like you.
Speaker A:Oh my God, the joy of that I just can't imagine.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Well, you just said your, your home had 42 televisions or something like that.
Speaker B:You know, in the new good life you talk about turn off the TV and turn on life.
Speaker B:And I love that and what screens to me are doing to, to the youth and to adults because it's so addicting.
Speaker B:It's like you gotta, you gotta figure out a way to like either throw it out or limit it.
Speaker B:Limit it.
Speaker A:You gotta have a, Some bright lines.
Speaker A:Yeah, I have like around food.
Speaker A:I have some bright lines.
Speaker A:I will never eat anything from a factory farm ever, under any circumstances, period.
Speaker A:Now if my life was at stake and I was starving and that was all that was available, I don't know.
Speaker A:But absent that, I'm never going to eat anything from a factory farm.
Speaker A:When I travel, I lower my standards just a little bit because I'm very pristine at home, but, but not to that extent.
Speaker A:I will never eat anything from a factory farm, period.
Speaker A:End of story.
Speaker A:And I have that bright line and it's, for me, it's consistent with, it's an expression of my ethics and values and, and frankly my, my compassion and caring for the world and for people and for animals.
Speaker A:Yeah, so that's me.
Speaker A:I think we need to have bright lines around our, our use of screens.
Speaker A:No, I'm not suggesting that everybody, you know, go on a, you know, do away with them.
Speaker A:That, that's not practical.
Speaker A:But we get addicted.
Speaker A:And there's something about the technology that, that reinforces the worst parts of us.
Speaker A:And you know what they say?
Speaker A:They used to say, what bleeds leads, meaning the headlines would be about scandals and blood.
Speaker A:Now I think the saying would be what, what enrages, engages.
Speaker A:They want engagement.
Speaker A:They want you to pass on retweet.
Speaker A:They want your eyeballs.
Speaker A:They want you to read the stay on the page so they can sell you stuff.
Speaker A:They want you to, they want you hooked.
Speaker A:And they do that by making you enraged or disgusted because those are the emotions that people will.
Speaker A:I think sometimes we, we, we have.
Speaker A:It's in our nature.
Speaker A:If we sense danger, something that's disgusting or horrible or frightening or dangerous, we want to tell everybody, warn everybody about it.
Speaker A:That's just part of how we evolved as people.
Speaker A:Now we're inundated with horrifying and disgusting and enraging input all the time.
Speaker A:And we want to tell everybody because that's our nature.
Speaker A:So then that leads to this, this extra engagement online and in the social media.
Speaker A:I call it the anti social media for the most part, because it's not building relationships, it's actually harming them in a lot of cases.
Speaker A:So I think we need bright lines.
Speaker A:I need, we need whatever yours or mine or someone else, we got to find our own.
Speaker A:Where, where.
Speaker A:But, but for me, I mean, I, I just have to turn off the Computer, walk away from it.
Speaker A:Get outside.
Speaker A:Yeah, for me, it's get outside.
Speaker A:Because as long as I'm indoors, the attraction is stronger.
Speaker A:As soon as I get outside.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:As soon as I start moving, as soon as I start breathing more, the natural world saves me.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:You know, another thing you talk about in the new good life that I put to practice last night with my family is we.
Speaker B:We love having dinners together.
Speaker B:It's sacred time.
Speaker B:We love going around and asking each other, you know, how was your day?
Speaker B:Tell us something that was great or tell us something that made you sad.
Speaker B:It's just something, right, to get everybody talking.
Speaker B:And you, you talked about a game called Two Truths and a Lie, right?
Speaker B:And I'm like, okay, I'm going to try this.
Speaker B:So I did it, you know, and let's see, there were four of us.
Speaker B:My son wasn't there, and so two of them got it, which I was telling a lie.
Speaker B:Two of them did it.
Speaker B:But it was so cool to see each one, my two daughters and my wife try and come up with three stories and just the exercise.
Speaker B:And my wife is such a bad liar that she told three truths.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker B:Then she was telling him.
Speaker B:And I'm like, they all sound really good, but I'm like, okay, it's the time you were on a Ferris wheel and somebody vomited on your head and.
Speaker B:But it was real, right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And then I had one daughter.
Speaker B:Her two truths and a lie took literally 10 minutes to tell it.
Speaker A:We're finally like, come on, Sophie, finish.
Speaker B:But it was a blast.
Speaker B:Was a blast.
Speaker B:I, I encourage everybody to try it.
Speaker A:And I. I'll tell you another practice around dinner tables, it's.
Speaker A:That doesn't take quite as long.
Speaker A:Yeah, is.
Speaker A:Is.
Speaker A:Is.
Speaker A:It's called ocean.
Speaker A:Invented this, actually.
Speaker A:It's called the word a.
Speaker A:A.
Speaker A:A bud, a thorn, and a.
Speaker A:And a rose.
Speaker A:And each person takes a turn to share a thorn, which is something that's bothering them or something that happened that day that was difficult for them or challenging a bud, something they're hoping for or aspiring for, working towards a goal they have in their life for themselves, or something like that.
Speaker A:And the flower, something that happened today that they loved, something that they enjoyed, something that enriched their experience of life and was inspiring to them.
Speaker A:And, and even little kids can play this.
Speaker A:They, you know, have to have a certain verbal skill.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:And, and you get to know each other.
Speaker A:You share your.
Speaker A:There's an old saying that among.
Speaker A:Among friends and family, joys that are shared are doubled and sorrows that are shared are halved.
Speaker A:And in that spirit the, the sharing of, of, of the thorn of the difficulty, whatever the challenge is also connecting because you know, you know what other people are dealing with and then, and then you might not have known otherwise and you know, what they're, what they're liking and what they're, what they're, you know, what they're aspiring towards or wanting.
Speaker A:And it's, it's, it's, there's a sense of everybody knows everybody a little bit better for those few minutes and it's centering and everyone gets to speak.
Speaker A:And even you know, the people who are less verbal, maybe the children or the people who are shyer get their full turn and same grace.
Speaker A:Finding ways to celebrate our connection with each other and with life.
Speaker A:To me that's the richness when we do that.
Speaker A:We don't need the fancy brand new car, shiny car, the cost is 800amonth, you know.
Speaker B:No, no, those, those, those are the golden moments like what we had last night at dinner.
Speaker B:That to me is more important than anything that money can buy.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:That's, those are the golden moments that I live for.
Speaker B:And something you just said about, you know, sharing, sharing with, whether it's your family or, or friends, when you're having a hard time, when you're going, when you're, when you're in pain and you're suffering, to me that also is a very powerful way to create more powerful bonds.
Speaker A:Yeah, it really is.
Speaker A:It really is.
Speaker A:And when we, when we know the weight that others are carrying just automatically creates compassion for them.
Speaker A:And in our society, we, a lot of times we're ashamed of our difficulties and our problems and we don't talk about them particularly as guys.
Speaker A:I mean our training is men.
Speaker A:You know, we don't talk about our feelings.
Speaker A:We help other people, we provide, we, we're strong and silent and, and we get ulcers and cancer and we kill ourselves inside because we don't, we don't let other people know us.
Speaker A:That's the training.
Speaker A:Maybe you don't, maybe you have your own, own version of it.
Speaker A:I, I, I, I, I've had to deal with that a lot.
Speaker A:And, and to be able to talk about my challenges without feeling ashamed of them or were self pitying is to do it with respect and dignity.
Speaker A:Is, has been a real growth place for me to learn how to do that.
Speaker A:And I don't pretend to have it down, but I'm, I'm, I'm, that's one of my, my buds that's one of the things I'm working on.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:To be more.
Speaker B:But to me, that's one of the things to me that in reading your.
Speaker B:All your books is so spectacular about you is the way you kind of open yourself up and you make yourself vulnerable and you tell us about, you know, all the travails you've gone through.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Just as a human being and.
Speaker B:But, you know, I mean, the struggles with your father and with, you know, with mother money and trying to.
Speaker B:Who.
Speaker B:Who am I and what am I?
Speaker B:And, you know, I mean, but it's awesome.
Speaker B:It's awesome.
Speaker A:Well, thank you, Rip.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And, you know, it's human.
Speaker A:It's human.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And I just want to thank you because you have been such a.
Speaker A:A beacon.
Speaker A:You know, I met you at Whole Foods, and John Mackey took a liking to you and, and, And Engine two Foods emerged out of that.
Speaker A:But then Amazon bought Whole Foods, and as I understand it, you're kind of on your own now.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker A:And we've pivot.
Speaker B:We've pivoted now, and it's no longer Engine Two.
Speaker B:Engine two was great.
Speaker B:It's the genesis of it all, you know, was the firehouse.
Speaker B:But the reality is it's a little bit muddy and ambiguous.
Speaker B:So the new brand is Plant Strong, which you also.
Speaker B:Yes, you.
Speaker B:And you and I very much.
Speaker B:Really, that really resonated with us is a good foot forward for kind of the movement and the brain.
Speaker A:I love the phrase.
Speaker A:Absolutely love it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So we have the new food line now is.
Speaker B:Is Plant Strong.
Speaker B:Not.
Speaker A:Not.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And that's what all of our.
Speaker B:All of our events, all of our.
Speaker B:Our online coaching, all of our retreats.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:Or Plant Strong.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I like it.
Speaker A:I like it a lot.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, here's to the success of the Plant Strong brand.
Speaker A:And here's to.
Speaker A:To.
Speaker A:To Plant Strong Life.
Speaker A:And to all of our.
Speaker A:Our listeners and viewers, here's to may you be Plant Strong.
Speaker A:You know, may you.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And here's to the food revolution.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And all.
Speaker B:All the.
Speaker B:All the just fantastic stuff that you and Ocean are doing before we.
Speaker B: ven where we are right now in: Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Why are you hopeful?
Speaker A:Because for me, hope is a state of mind, not an anticipation of what's going to happen.
Speaker A:It doesn't depend on optimism.
Speaker A:It doesn't depend on, oh, things are going to be rosy.
Speaker A:Therefore, I'M hopeful.
Speaker A:Hope is a choice for me that I make regardless of what I think, the outcome, how things are headed, because it's empowering.
Speaker A:I can respond, I can act.
Speaker A:And I so fear is the expectation that things are going to get worse.
Speaker A:And in that sense, hope is the expectation that things are going to get better.
Speaker A:The typical meaning of the word.
Speaker A:But for me, the meaning of the word is more about self empowerment and self and autonomy and the right to choose.
Speaker A:Your own attitude in the face of freedom is what you do with what's done to you.
Speaker A:Freedom is what you choose.
Speaker A:And so even when things are going really badly, to choose hope for me isn't to deny and go into unconsciousness around the trends and developments that are so frightening.
Speaker A:It's to choose a response that's empowered to those events.
Speaker A:And it's always possible to love regardless of what is happening.
Speaker A:We have choice about the attitude we bring to that event.
Speaker A:And some events are so awful and painful that we may take a while to find our choice.
Speaker A:But if we live with a sense of respect and reverence for life that's inclusive of the sorrows and the.
Speaker A:But, you know, the thorns and the difficulties and challenges, then when they come, we're not shocked, we're not destabilized, we're challenged.
Speaker A:But we can connect with each other.
Speaker A:And it's that sense that we can do this together that I'm afraid might be being lost today in the Internet world and social media and other events.
Speaker A:That's one of the reasons I appreciate this connection with you so much.
Speaker A:And if we can find the togetherness, I'm not being kumbaya here, but just we're so much more powerful when we work together and when we're on the same team.
Speaker A:One of the things when Dale and I have difficulties, sometimes I'll just say, same team, just same team.
Speaker B:Nice.
Speaker A:Let's deal this like we're on the same team.
Speaker A:And she gets it.
Speaker A:Sometimes she says it to me because I get upset.
Speaker A:She says, same team.
Speaker A:And it's that choice to work together and find our better natures, find our strengths and feed them.
Speaker A:Feed them with the food we eat.
Speaker A:Feed them with the things we read and don't read.
Speaker A:The things that drain your capacity to respond.
Speaker A:Don't embody, don't inflict upon you foods or experiences or people who are toxic to your capacity to love and to.
Speaker A:To grow and to do what you're on this earth to do, whatever that might be.
Speaker A:Some of us have big, bigger karma, you know, destiny than others in the.
Speaker A:In the.
Speaker A:But it doesn't matter.
Speaker A:Whatever.
Speaker A:You're.
Speaker A:What.
Speaker A:Everyone has a destiny.
Speaker A:Everyone has a purpose.
Speaker A:Everyone has love to give and.
Speaker A:And relationships to.
Speaker A:To nurture.
Speaker A:And that's what I.
Speaker A:That's where I find hope.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:In that.
Speaker B:Well, that.
Speaker B:I love that answer.
Speaker B:You are.
Speaker B:You are really brilliantly articulate.
Speaker B:And what a.
Speaker B:What a.
Speaker B:What a gift that you have.
Speaker B:John.
Speaker B:Let me say in closing that how much I love the values that you espouse.
Speaker B:I love the message that you are delivering.
Speaker B:I love the example that you set every day.
Speaker B:And we would not be where we are today without you a long time ago, having the courage to find your true self.
Speaker B:And thank you for that.
Speaker A:Well, thank you, Rip.
Speaker A:And thank you for all you're doing to carry it on, you and your whole family.
Speaker A:And it's.
Speaker A:It's a blessing to know you.
Speaker B:Right back at you.
Speaker B:Hey, hit me with a little plant strong loving.
Speaker A:All right, buddy?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:FoodRevolutionsummit.org is the website to register for John and Ocean Robin's eight day Food Revolution Summit.
Speaker B:Make food the foundation for your health and find deeper meaning and more purpose in your life.
Speaker B:We'll make sure that all the links are in the show notes@planstrongpodcast.com we'll see you next week.
Speaker B:And until then, keep it Plantstrong.
Speaker B:The Plantstrong podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Lori Kortowich, Amy Mackey, Patrick Gavin, and Wade Clark.
Speaker B:This season is dedicated to all of those courageous truth seekers who weren't afraid to look through the the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth.
Speaker B:Most notably my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. And Ann Krile Esselstyn.
Speaker B:Thanks for listening.
