Leafbox Podcast: Recent Episodes
LEAFBOX
Talking with Tom Murphy, professor emeritus of the departments of Physics and Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of California, San Diego, passionate astronomer, author of the Do the Math blog and the Metastatic Modernity series on mapping the intersections of thermodynamics, ecological limits, and the long arc of civilizational collapse…
On species-level growth versus the fantasy of the endless economy, on Dyson spheres, on boiling the oceans, on the sixth mass extinction, on solar panels that preserve modernity rather than the planet, on peak oil and fracking, on demographic modeling, on Africa’s food spigot, on John Michael Greer and “collapse now to avoid the rush”, on sealed-glass shrimp, Mars as juvenile fantasy, on Hobbes as mythology, on rivulets down a windshield, on the amoeba’s genius and thirteen thousand genes, on hunter gather lifestyles, carrying loads of the planet, on friction fire, flint knapping, atlatl darts, on written language as the thing academics will never speak against, Tom’s work challenges both the Mars-colonizing techno-optimist and the solar-cheering mainstream environmentalist, arguing instead for falling out of love with modernity: not doom for humanity, or life, ultimately trying to provide quantitative assessment of the challenges associated with long-term human success on a finite planet.
Excerpts
Tom Murphy’s Law
And my version of Murphy’s Law is that it’s not if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. It’s that if something can happen, you shouldn’t be surprised if it does.
On Authentic Living
I’m a prisoner, and I don’t feel hypocritical bashing the prison that I’m in.
I think that’s valid. What I can do is just try to raise awareness that we don’t have to be in a prison, and ultimately we might escape to more authentic ways of living and dispel the mythology around the, fear, this irrational fear about other ways of living that have worked well for humans for countless millennia.
On The Sixth Mass Extinction
“Preserving our ability to crank out terawatts of energy is exactly the same as preserving our ability to continue a sixth mass extinction.”
Aside from his work with Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation Project, Tom Murphy is known for his blog “Do The Math” which examines societal issues related to energy production, climate change, and economic growth from an astrophysicist’s perspective
Do the Math Blog
Book: Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet
https://tmurphy.physics.ucsd.edu/
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Talking with James Van Lanen, anthropologist, re-wilding advocate, and author of Human Rewilding in the 21st Century, mapping the intersections of species-level fitness, ecological embeddedness, and the long arc of civilizational collapse…
On species-level fitness versus civilizational fitness, on Herbert Spencer and the colonial roots of survival of the fittest, on aggrandizing agents and the alpha-hoarding pattern, on the Radical Anthropology Group and the female coalition theory of human speciation, on Pierre Clastres and secondary primitivism, the people who ran back into the jungle, on five hundred years of Amazonian oral history as the most successful anti-civilizational politic in human history, on the Hadza and the smartphone controversy, on his rebuttal to Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything, on Joseph Tainter and continually diminishing returns, on the gathering that would fall apart at thirty days, on nodal community versus rigid communes, on finding your gifts rather than peddling hope, on daughters and the stone knives,
Thirteen years traveling by small aircraft to remote Alaskan communities, fieldwork across four continents, Siberia, the Amazon, Africa, and now independent, outside the bureaucracy of both the academy and the state. His work challenges both the right-wing bunker prepper and the techno-progressive urban left, arguing instead for rural dropout-ism: not ideology, but as a true measure of human fitness.
Excerpts
On Amazonian Isolated Tribes
There's some sort of oral history passed down for generations that says: those progressive complex societies — don't go in. They're very dangerous. And they've maintained that politic for at least several hundred years, if not thousands.
Channeling Derek Jensen
You are just a puny little human. You cannot change this situation as an individual. But figure out what your gifts are: what's really in your heart, and apply them to bettering the situation even in the smallest way you can.
On Species Fitness
And I came to the conclusion that real species level fitness is intimately connected to the natural world without all this technological mediation that's the why I've just never stopped this path because to me on a personal level, pursuing that wildlife provides me this really strong feeling of living optimally.
Connect with James @
https://www.jamesvanlanen.com/
https://www.humanrewilding.earth/
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Talking with Charles Hugh Smith, writer, self-employed economic critic, and author of the long-running blog Of Two Minds, mapping the intersections of capitalism, self-reliance, and moral decay from his homestead in Hilo, Hawaii…
Twenty-plus years of writing against the grain, on questioning the incentives that hold our systems together and the fragilities hidden beneath them.His work challenges both the doom-and-gloom survivalist fantasy and the techno-utopian promise, arguing instead for local community, reciprocity, and a return to something like integrity in how we organize our economic lives.
On growing tobacco as a doomsday crop, on investing locally even when the returns aren’t optimal, on strengthening the place you actually live, on the turtle instinct and why it fails, on community as the only real prepping, on systems that are self-liquidating, on the role of the critic as heretic, on the Overton window, on self-employment as a different lens on the economy, on the second matrix, on getting sucked past the event horizon of geopolitical finance and never coming back, on social media as plutonium exposure, on kindness and integrity having zero incentive in the system, on the waste-is-growth landfill economy, on progress as secular religion and challenge as heresy, on Marx as a Judeo-Christian moralist seduced by scientism, on immigration as voting with your feet, on Hawaii as microcosm, on UBI and bad poetry, on the Asperger model of self-drive, on manic depression as a prerequisite for writing that has no market, on high-touch work as the thing AI can never replace, on the wait person as part of the meal, on labor-backed currency, on Berkeley co-ops and the immediate emergence of corruption and arbitrage in even the smallest markets, on Taoism as the action of inaction, on not depending on AI without being against it, on diagnosis or prognosis, on the moral universe that AI does not live in…
Excerpts
On Fixes
I don’t think that tweaking some regulation is really gonna fix this thing.
On Criticism
I think a lot of readers would say I’ve been wrong about everything… but the role of the critic is to open the Overton window. I’ve been wrong about the status quo being able to exist or continue as if nothing had ever happened.
In other words, whatever it’s been thrown at it, financial crises, war, whatever, it just grinds on. And so that I think has surprised me to some degree, but I still think that doesn’t mean that it’s as durable as people think that the fragilities are just being hidden behind systems that.
On Immigration
So whatever you’re gonna do with immigration, it has to be upfront and fair, or else people are gonna find fault with it for good reason.
On Heresy
We’ve identified progress with expansion of consumption and technological innovation… I consider them equivalent to religious beliefs, because when you challenge those beliefs, you get a response akin to a heretic. We’re gonna burn you at the stake for challenging progress.
On AI
We live in a moral universe. And AI does not live in a moral universe.
Linkshttps://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
Charles Hugh Smith
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Talking with Michelle Horsley, autistic researcher, artist, and writer of the Aut Naught Aut, mapping the parapolitical architecture of the autism industrial complex… From her personal experiences growing up autistic to her extensive research into the historical and current narratives surrounding autism.
Her insights challenge mainstream as well as alternative perceptions and reveal layers of political and social complexities. She advocates for a more informed and empathetic understanding of autism that truly centers the voices of those within the community.
On being five and nearly institutionalized, on cousins who disappeared into care and were never spoken of, on the mercy of small schools and open fields, on learning to speak through rote phrases like operating systems, on meaning blindness, on writing poetry to break the blocks, on internet relay chat in 1992 and the joy of text-only communion, on autistic people discovering each other online for the first time, on the flowering of recognition, on the anti-vax people arriving in autistic spaces and tearing it all down, on being told your identity is a disease, on Scientologists using communication tech as a weapon, on the split between autistic adults and parents of autistic children that became unbridgeable, on Leo Kanner, on childhood schizophrenia, on post-immunization encephalopathy, on Bernard Rimland wearing two hats — hero to the parent community and career naval psychologist directing future technologies, on the 1958 National Defense Education Act and the state’s interest in gifted minors, on gifted and talented programs, on MKUltra, on Kim Peek, on the military search for savants, on Scientology level OT VIII, on Operation Snow White, on RFK Jr., on Generation Rescue, on Bob Wright, on ARPA-H, on the after-party to TED Talks, on Andrew Wakefield’s very small study that said nothing about the MMR, on overstimulation and the mind whiting out, on the map that is always provisional, on following the hacktivists. on the state being hostile to ordinary people, on questioning everything, on c self-expression, on being less autistic than she used to be, on identifying plants intuitively, on tending a vineyard and making wine and losing goats to wolves, on the techno-utopian dystopia not working, on the return to non-technological ways of living, on failure as liberation…
Excerpts
On Hyper Associational Autism
we have hyper associational kind of minds, … so I do make links between things that seem unrelated… I’ve been building this map. And as the map comes together and informs, I can start to make predictions. And if it’s accurate, then I know my map is pretty close to what’s really going on.
On Autism and Scientologists
This battle between autistics and Scientologists has been going on for decades.
Bernard Rimland completely took over the perception of what autism is. On one hand , in the autism parent community, he was Mr. Hero. But on the other side, he was a career naval psychologist, a research psychologist, director of future technologies and recruit enhancement.
Scientologists don’t just, they’re very careful about who they associate with. So for a Scientologist to be an in-house lawyer at Children’s Health Defense means that organization is affiliated with Scientology strongly.” “It’s not even a cult. It’s more what is it. You could say it’s a cult that’s that’s operationalized in terms of it’s intelligence work.
On Vaccines and Autism
Vaccines don’t cause autism, but vaccines are not good. In fact, vaccines probably are injuring children, but the two things got all mixed up together and he’s (RFK JR) part of that.
I just want to really encourage listeners to question, recognize that the Health Freedom movement is full of Scientologists and they’re not your friends. Not everybody who’s communicating with you is telling you the truth, especially, online.
Aut Naught Aut
Aspie Quiz
https://rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php
Artwork by Michelle Horsley
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Talking with writer, reader, wanderer Znore , anonymous author of the blog Group Name for Grape Juice and his essay collection exploring imagination across philosophy, religion, literature, conspiracy, culture, a name plucked from Finnegans Wake, a pseudonym as portal, a thumb raised to the Dao of ideas.
On hitchhiking as a philosophy of life, on synchronicities, on conversations continuing between strangers, on looking for the connective narrative between Blake and Nietzsche and McLuhan, on perception as incarnation, on bodying forth a world through the senses, on Nietzsche’s claim that we are all greater artists than we know, on the imagination as Christ, on supercharging passive perception into active creation, on the non-dual lurking beneath, on CS Lewis and Tolkien and the myth that is also history, on Owen Barfield and original participation, on Steiner’s evolution of consciousness, on animism as the religion of the earth, on the 8 million kami of Shinto and finding spirits in toilets and trees and rocks, on idolatry as the epoch of separation, on Philip K. Dick and the band that only played once but left many recordings, on finding God in the litter of the street, on Joyce and the refusal to separate high and low culture, on Finnegans Wake, on Vipassana, on prayer as the fastest route to sacred space, on Meister Eckhart’s , on the original sangha and the early Christians as communists, on Marx’s alienation mapped onto Barfield’s idolatry, on the potlatch and the destruction of surplus, on Robert Anton Wilson’s axiom that communication only happens between equals, on politics as the great distraction from the spiritual project, on the Chöd ritual and monks inviting demons to devour them in charnel grounds, on the eye atop the conspiracy pyramid being your own ego, on Jacob Böhme’s God of wrath and God of love as one God, on AI as both Pentecost and Antichrist, on masks as honest practice, on raising children, on quiet resistance, on the cosmic communism of saving all beings from suffering, on life, on practice, on love.
Excerpts
On Hitchhiking
Every time you’re on the road and you put your thumb out, you’re tapping into the DAO and just any ride that you get, completely alters the course of your life in a certain way.
On Imagination
The primary imagination is the imagination of the I am, which is God, but it’s reflected in us through our perception.
And so we all have this, we all have the imagination of God in the sense that we perceive things and we create the world that we behold with our senses.
It’s already anti-authoritarian. But I’ll call myself an anarchist anyway, just to just to emphasize that, that my main focus is freedom and liberty, right? And especially that includes above all the freedom of the imagination. The liberty of the imagination.
On Politics
Cosmic communism, not related to state control and Stalinism, none of that, but it’s save all beings from suffering. That’s what my politics are all about…
Death Sweat of the Cluster: Selected Essays from Groupname for Grapejuice.By ZnoreAn inebriated exploration of reality and other myths featuring Finnegans Wake, William Blake, Robert Anton Wilson, Philip K. Dick, Emma Goldman, Ezra Pound, Robert Duncan, Terence McKenna, Gertrude Stein, Carl Jung, Marshall McLuhan and others as guides and waylayers. A cast of hundreds. Blog becomes book becomes new medium entirely. Synchronicity, siddhis, numerology, psychedelics, anarchy, the gods, yes. The poetics of anti-authority. Beautifully illustrated. Read with tea.
Group Name for Grape Juicehttps://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/
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Talking with former Marine signals intelligence operator and security consultant Matthew John Heath, decorated for valor in Iraq and detained in Venezuela for 752 days, on intercepting morse code and decrypting the invisible, on doing hard things because they’re hard, on being in Kuwait when the towers fell, on Nasiriyah with 33 Marines wounded in a single firefight, on thirteen years of boots on the ground in Iraq, on war as sacred and force as last resort, on accusations of explosives and phantom planes, on Venezuelan military counterintelligence, on torture and God’s grace, on prisoner swaps, on oil, on Maduro, on biometric IDs and surveillance states, on the internet being free and speech being anonymous, on Mao Zedong, on living like a fish in water, on operational and personal security, on trauma and coming home, on helping others get free.
Excerpts
On Being Detained by the Venezuelan State
They start screaming at me, pointing guns at me, order me to take off all my clothes. Where are the explosives? Where is the plane? Where’s the CIA base.
And I’m in shock. I’m handed over over to the military counterintelligence, and that’s where things got pretty rough.”
On Being
I liked the idea of doing something hard just because it’s hard.
On The Battle of Nasiriyah
In one firefight we had 33 Marines. Seriously wounded. Gunshots and shrapnel, and that’s out of about 120 guys. So we had a 25% casualty in, in one firefight. So when I say we had a pretty, pretty stiff resistance.
On War
I don’t believe in using war just as any other policy tool. I believe that the use of force is almost sacred. I think that, if you break the glass and you pull the lever, that should be a big deal. I’m very supportive of the United States… If you cut my finger, I bleed red, white, and blue.
On Propaganda
These are all propaganda tools for internal political purposes. Many dictatorships they need an external enemy to unify the domestic political situation. I don’t know, I can’t speak to how many people believe this, but I can tell you that it’s a very common tool in these dictatorships
Connect with Matthew @ https://matthewjohnheath.com/
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Talking with psychotherapist, guitarist Matt Baldwin on his collection How to Play Guitar, an “anarchist cookbook for the creative process, an heirloom seed library of underground values and culture, a map of inner and outer edge places” (Tartantula Press 2025)
On motivation from V. Vale, the philosophical underpinnings of punk, on Nassim Taleb’s anti-fragile thinking and auto-didactic survival strategies, on John Fahey psyche, on low-res analog magic, on creativity as automatic cascading thought, on taping paper to paper at the kitchen table, on making art without handholding or explanation, on psychotherapy as edge work for the creative unconscious, on hypnosis and ontological shock, on alien abduction and lost time, on ketamine, on UFOs and the government’s, on synesthetic perception shifts and reality’s mutability, on rescue music, on DJing in therapy, on uncertainty as the engine of therapeutic change, on not-knowing as technique, on urban exploration of the haunted margins, on freight hopping and riding trains into wasteland, on survival and longevity as an artist, on stepping outside surveillance into forgotten spaces where trees grow through living room floors, on being, on enjoying being wrong, on religion and spiritual practice, on practice, on life.
Interview Excerpts
On Returning from the Edge
I think I say that in the book somewhere, it’s valuable to go crazy if you know how to come back.
On Paradigms
What did it destroy? It destroyed something about my reality, and how I think about reality. So it was this kind of weapon against my paradigm that I was holding onto.
On End Points
I think it’s more a case of, it’s time to face the answer rather than to find the answer.
On Music in Therapy
It’s all you have to do. Just listen to the music. And that was very reassuring. And if you do that, you realize that the music is this carrier wave that pulls you through the experience. And it can energize the experience or it can make it more tranquil.
Interview contains samples from Matt Baldwin’s Album NEW UNIVERSAL SOLAR CALENDAR
Intro: Did you See the Eyes
Outer: Old Sand Roads
Links:
Matt Baldwin’s Psychotherapy Practice: https://mattbaldwin.net/
How To Play Guitar by Matt Baldwin
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Speaking with Guy Duperreault, writer, yoga teacher, COVID refugee, and uncompromising seeker of truth. Guy speaks from Oaxaca, Mexico, where he landed after refusing a vaccine mandate cost him his engineering career in Canada and set him walking across the U.S. border with four suitcases and a partner.
Years later these changes have materialized into what unfolds into a discussion that is part spiritual autobiography, part civilizational diagnosis. From Edward de Vere to the Bhagavad Gita, from Kundalini practice to the economics of manufactured consent, Guy draws from eclectic sources with the confidence of someone who has stopped caring whether it sounds respectable. His central provocation that all morality is the rationalized removal of compassion opens into a wider meditation on intimacy, anxiety, and what it means to listen to your body when every institution is asking you not to.
On the fake and the fabricated, on muscle testing and intuition, on leaving Canada, on synchronicity as guidance system, on economics as fakery, on trauma, on the body as truth-teller, on his critiques of feminism but not the feminine, on accountability, on the relativity of time, on Oaxaca, on expression of God, and more…
Connect with Guy Duperreault | Becoming A Refugee in the Time of Covid
Excepts
On Action
Whenever I’m blaming or complaining, I’m giving away my ability to choose action.
On Feminism vs Feminine
We deny the history through mythology of the power of the female. So one of the great lies of feminism is that women are weak. That’s bullshit, right? They’re much stronger than men in many respects, and men respect them much more because women have the ability to create life in a way that men do not have.
On Being Victim
I was a victim of a narcissistic mother. And not only she was a narcissistic mother, she was also angry. And it turns out that she confessed to me when I was 18 years old that she had actually killed me as an infant and that I needed to be revived in some way. I have no recollection of that. Michelle has informed me that the way she killed me was by beating me to death, which I didn’t know.
Post Script from Guy:
Perhaps include a link to my essay on have to and should. That simple change of language has the power to transform life.
Spell Breaking Language-Keys to Unlock Language LocksUnseen, We Live Bully Stockholm Syndrome And Other Oddities of Being Alive in a Miss-Spelled See of Words
Guy Duperreault. Oct 30, 2023
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Speaking with writer, collapse philosopher, novelist, and blogger Ran Prieur in a conversation that unfolds with a slow, organic rhythm, a pleasurable meandering walk through modern life and its ruins. Ran, as always, is philosophically rich, grounded, and quietly radical. In line with his long-held ethos of anti-industrial, post-collapse thought. I enjoyed reengaging with this contemplative tone in moving naturally between personal insight and social critique, offering a model for intimacy that remains intellectually serious and open.
From technology as spellcraft, to collapse as ongoing reorientation, to spiritual practice as a form of quiet resistance, on his new novel, on writing, the conversation avoids doomer clichés: it’s not about despair, but about seeing clearly. Ran speaks with a rare patience that reveals thought in motion pausing, circling, revising inviting us to listen more closely to what remains alive, to re-enchant.
For an earlier conversation with Ran, I invite you to listen to my 2022 interview with Ran Prieur.
Excerpts
On Mind and Matter as Play
“Matter is like a game that we’re playing. It’s like you’re playing a board game and if you’re playing a board game, you have to follow the rules of the game. And that’s what matter is. It’s a game. The mind is playing and that we’re all in. And while we’re in it, we have to follow its rules, but underneath it’s all mind.”
On Returning to the Non-Human World
“We’ve pulled all this stuff where humans are going deeper and deeper into a world of our own creation, and we’ve lost the vital force which we can get by going back to the non-human made world.”
On The Zeitgeist
“ We are the fish. And our whole culture is the fish and everything is going faster and brighter as the net closes around us. That’s my sense of the zeitgeist. “
“AI is not the painter, AI is the pallet.”
More Ran Prieur
Some works / people mentioned in the interview that might not be clear in audio transcription
Purse-Seine: a large wall of netting used in fishing to encircle and capture schools of fish
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou by Hitoshi Ashinano
Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre
John Vervaeke, Ph.D - psychology, cognitive science, and Buddhist psychology at the University of Toronto.
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Talking with writer, garage mystic, and Lotus Sutra enthusiast, Jigoku — anonymous poster and publisher — on Buddhist intellectual responses to civilization shift. On his treatise Theory of the End, on shitposting, on Buddhist white pills, on the Lotus Sutra, Nichirenism, utopianism, and modernity, on his analysis and response to Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man, on Devadatta as archetype, on Jacques Ellul and the relentless onslaught of technique, on the esoteric, on on Kishio Satomi and the Nichirenist response to modernity machinery, on Nick Land, on Tetsuo: The Iron Man, on Dan da Dan, on the Hungry Ghost press and sutras on Namu Myoho Renge Kyo…
Hungry Ghost Books
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Talking with J.J Montagnier, writer, traveler, and scholar of cycle science, the systems on the hidden rhythms of history, the meta physical energy trends that shape civilizations and that that help us navigate moments of collapse and renewal. On the Mayan calendars, Vedic Yuga cycles, and the mimetic rivalry and the Jungian archetypes that move beneath politics and culture. On liminality and transition, peak oil and peak centralization, and the coming age of decentralization and spiritual resurgence.
On J.J’s lifelong journey across continents seeking wisdom in ancient teachings and living systems. On his path from Jungian psychology and archetypal studies, on the Tower of Babel as metaphor, on the relationship between material energy decline and spiritual energy ascent, and on how these forces echo through our present moment.
On how to prepare for what comes next not through fear or apocalypse fantasies, but by maintain openness, awareness, reverence, and adaptability.
Excerpts
We are in a Tower of Babel scenario where we have had convergence for decades and we are now finally, reaching a point where we will have peak centralization, which will be temporary because when we see a major material energy decline, it would be very difficult for the centralization to be maintained and or at the same level.
We are transitioning from a high materialism to a low materialism, more or less.
As we enter an era of physical energy declines. We might also enter an era of spiritual energy inclines in terms of we will become more spiritual, less materialistic consciously at the same time when we are, we actually need to adapt and adjust to less energy material energy in reality.
I think the transition we will be going through will require an openness, a greater openness, let's say, to meta metaphysical concepts. Simply because I think life will become too weird really to understand what's going on without having some metaphysical understanding of what's unfolding.
J.J’s latest essay discussed:
https://energyshifts.net/mimetic-rivalry-in-the-tower-of-babel/
J.J. Montagnier is an independent writer based in the Southern Hemisphere. His main areas of interest are depth-psychology, consciousness, ancient civilisations, mythology, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy and metaphysics.
https://energyshifts.net/
For those interested in more depth and information on Mayan systems: Mayan Wisdom Project is a valuable resource:
https://www.themayanwisdomproject.com/
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Beyond the Bad Trip: Psychedelics, Myth, and the Rediscovery of Spiritual Health
Talking with Dr. Thomas Cook, psychiatrist, writer, on navigating the crossroads science, spirituality, and myth. On psychedelics (“bad trips”) as way markers back to the natural state, as tools for dissolving the walls of modern state, on genuine religious connection. On depression ego inward-facing, a comforting puppet show of self-talk, and the bad trip as its opposite: a shattering, outward-facing vision that shocks us back into relationship with the world.
On the modern epidemic of skepticism, rationalism, and invisibility, and how psychedelics remove the Ring of Power to return us to childlike awe, returning us to visible beings once again. On demons, entities, and Tolkien’s Sauron as metaphors for the hidden darkness we deny. On Christianity, paganism, and the rediscovery of primal virtues through psychedelic experience.
On the failures of the pharmacological model of psychiatry and the limits of mainstream science, on folk medicine and scientific humility, on microdosing and sacredness, and on building a moral framework sturdy enough to contain powerful experiences. On the value of different tools, on the dangers and risks of psychedelics, on other ways. On madness as non ego. On introjection, on family as the root of culture, broken homes as the source of modern illness, on monogamy, jealousy, and the natural laws embedded in the human soul.
A conversation discussing Dr Cook’s latest essay on “The Benefits of Bad Trips”, on psychological surgery, psychedelics as spiritual compasses and tools to reconnect with awe..
Dr Cook’s Essay: The Benefits of a Bad Triphttps://beyondmentalhealth.com/the-benefits-of-a-bad-trip/
Dr Cook’s Medical Practice
2022 Leafbox Interview with Dr Cook
Excerpts
On His Latest Essay
So the original motivation is to give a hardheaded, more traditionally psychoanalytic explanation for why a bad trip in particularly heals depression…
Psychedelics free people not just from rationalism, but also from moralism and depression is a form of moralism. It's a moral disease. It's a moralistic disease, and science is not moralistic. It's ontological….
On Skepticism
I see the atheist skeptical position as similar to the depressed position.
That miraculous, wondrous outwardness that you get from psychedelics, that psychedelics restore people to a genuine religiosity, not a fake one.
And they may even break down a person with fake religiosity. I think if they use a psychedelic, it may terrify them that they're not a believer anymore. They now you're back to the square one. Now you're back to where you were when you were a little kid. And you might feel like you're a pagan again.
You may go out in the yard and look at the flowers and be tempted to worship them. And that's not a bad thing. That's natural. That's all humanity as it's in its starting point. We, for, that's just the starting point in humanity. You have to have sympathy on it.
On Universal Soul
It's hippie dippy, but it's also Native American. It's also Catholic. It's also Pagan. It's also Roman. It's also Viking. It's also Samoan. It's also Eskimo. Just look around the world. What do people value the most is family and their souls and the state of their soul.
Dr. Cook does not recommend the use of any federally illegal drug.
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A conversation with Canadian independent journalist Byron Christopher, exploring the shadows where public narratives meet private truths. Byron shares his unlikely path from small-town disc jockey to frontline reporter, reflecting on the pivotal moments that shaped a career spent chasing stories others wouldn’t touch.
Known for what he’s called an “Armageddon-like, blood-and-guts” style of crime reporting, Byron speaks about his approach to journalism and his belief in what he terms No News Release Journalism.
On the urgent need to diversify news sources in an era of collapsing public trust, and the ethical tightrope every reporter must walk. Byron recounts landmark investigations, from exposing allegations against Canadian oil companies operating in Sudan to tracking the twisting saga of convicted murderer and escape artist Richard Lee McNair.
Along the way, he shares stories of being a target of state surveillance, navigating dark and difficult subjects, and working on controversial cases, including UFO investigations, sensitive sexual abuse reports, and his work on Weibo Ludwig.
Part memoir, part introduction to fearless reporting, this interview offers a window into what it takes to stay human while holding power to account.
Excerpts
On Influences in Media
Here's the government lying to us. And the media went along with it. And that's what happens when you're on the take, where your bread is buttered and you fall into line. There are many examples of government influencing media, and I ran into that when I worked at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, very similar to the BBC in England and ABC in Australia.
On Interviewees:
I treat them fairly and with respect. And I think that creates a trust, but I don't cover it for them… there's a place where you can draw a line there, but my goal is to get information from them. And you're not gonna get it by being adversarial ever. And that works with crown prosecutors, judges, lawyers, people on the street, any, so I said to him, I'm here. I'm not your friend, not your enemy. Talk. Tell me what's on your mind, what's your point of view on this?”
On UFOs and Shattering Beliefs
He said, there are UFOs, Byron. And I said, okay. And that kinda shatters your belief because here they are saying that Roswell is not true and nothing crashed there and word comes out over time. Yeah, there were crashes.... Yeah, there's like little doubt anymore that we're not alone in the universe, and I don't know what else we've been lied to.
Yeah, it's a strange world, my friend, and the more I delve into it the less I seem to know is totally confusing at times.
On Being a Target of State Surveillance
That's a surveillance house. I said, on who? He said, you stupid. You've done stories on the oil and gas industry. They'd be doing that to you right away. And I said, I don't believe it. And he said, no, you Canadians are naive about that.
He said, I'll tell you how you bust that house. It's a surveillance house. It would be run by the similar to the NSA in the United States. We have our own group here called the Communications Security Establishment, CSC. He said that's who those people are. If they're monitoring you. I said, I don't believe it.”
…you should know that the communication security establishment in Canada, that's our NSA, has files on one in four Canadians. That's documented evidence brought up in parliament.
Byronchristopher.org/
Byron Christopher on eco-activist Wiebo Ludwig
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Talking with Luke Dodson, writer, mythographer, seeker, navigator of sovereign archetypes on cycles of collapse and renewal, on Jungian echoes, Campbellian journeys, and the sovereign myths that guard and dissolve empires. On the lawful sovereign who consolidates, the terrible sovereign who expands, and how their endless duel haunts the present moment. On his transition from writing on socio-political issues, on Extinction Rebellion and climate apocalypse liturgies, on doomer fantasies, on the current situation in the UK, to focusing deeply on spiritual and comparative mythological studies. On the nature of occult practices, spiritual grounding, on the toolkit of orientation, daily rituals as compass, and myth as a technology for navigating psychic weather. On the spiritual matrices, on entities, on the parapolitical, on self work vs outer work, spiritual research as spiritual practice, on the complexities of mythic archetypes and their reflections on modern spiritual and political landscapes…
Excerpts
On Collapse Cycles
“A better word than a collapse would be the ending of a cycle.
And in order for a cycle to end, something has to die so that something else can come out. And we see cycles in everything in nature. It could be, you could argue a base, some sort of cyclical process. So we have this negative association with the term collapse, and we have this idea that it's, oh, it's it's bad thing and we need to have infinite better things in the future… I think it, it would probably be better if we collapse, because if we don't, I think that the future would be, I'd be more concerned about the future of a non collapse.”
On the Role of the Soul in the Spiritual Ecology
“Beyond the physical, the body extends into subtler and subtler levels. Most of us believe we are confined to flesh, but experiences suggest otherwise: premonitions, psychic contact, thinking of someone just as they call you, or calling them to find they were thinking of you.
An occultist might say these are points of contact…our subtle bodies signaling across a more refined level of reality, like sending out a flare into the astral level… that another picks up unconsciously.
We are encountering these layers all the time. We don't necessarily just realize it, we don't necessarily have a language that can conceptualize it.”
On Self Work and Externalities
“It is much better to work on changing yourself than to work on changing the world outside. 'Cause first of all, it works. It is easier and it's also less dangerous because if you start to move things shove things around. In the outside world, if you're not really careful and you're not making sure that you're really in line with where things want to go naturally, where the Dao wants to flow, as it were, then you're setting yourself up for a lot of instability.
'cause there's always second order consequences and third order consequences of everything you do. And in like occultism, that's kicked up to the max because of what you put out, you'll get back. So if you, for example if you put a hex on someone, you're putting a hex on yourself sooner or later it's gonna come back at you.”
On Self Monitoring
“ A lot of self-monitoring because anyone who's dealing with archetypes and then archetypes in their own life is at risk of going completely insane.”
On Utopian Visions
“ Fully automated luxury space communism just sounds horrific.”
Connect with Luke Dodson
Flint & Steel
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Talking with The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo, author, mythmaker, visual artist, and a self-described Bardo Bard on his new book Lore Spores: Tales & Tools for Enhanced Enchantment. On parasitic possession as pedagogy, the protean potential of mimicry, and language as both spell and vessel. On sculpting the soul through shape shifting, the value of taking on personas, DMT in pair with Vipassana meditation as a microscope for cellular cosmology, and channeling the subconscious through a Hermes-brand archetypewriter. On the metaphysics of coffee withdrawal, personal folklores, pareidolia as daemonic interface, and how a flesh-eating parasite helped him unlock his inner light body. On using tea leaves and pareidolic doodles as oracular portals, the high weirdness of Scottish rap and Shrimp Pimping alter egos, and the mythopoetics of microbial gods. Also: on “Deep Face Blackface”, Goenka impersonations, gay protection, on scanning faces in clouds, the de/conditioning powers of psychedelics, and why being an adult might just mean learning how to play seriously and where the soul is.
Experts
On Being
People always say “Be Yourself.”I say, don't be yourself, be somebody else.It's not until you take leave of the limitations of who you believe yourself to be, that you can become who you really are, that you can become full expression.
On Elimination
A process of elimination leads to a process of illumination.
On Adulthood vs Childhood
For me being an adult is really being a skilled child, 'cause that's the soul really. It's that untarnished part of the self that comes into the world that we must protect at all costs. And that doesn't mean, not adulting or not, doing the necessary things or growing up and maturing, but preserving all of that stuff and you just, becoming more skilled in the things, because I think play is a way to learn.
On Revaulating Meta Reality
Meta reality instead of materiality which looks at matter in a different way because, we think of ourselves as singular self hoods moving through this world. You're Robert. I'm Michael. That's a chair. That's a guitar.
But there's actually all these cellular processes and these microbial bacterial processes and all these other living collectives that build and sustain and heal and break down this world of matter upon which the. Of the hallucination of the self rides.
And that got me to reevaluate my worldview in a lot of ways. And looking at like the micro, the microbial microbiological implications. 'cause usually we tend to think of things as a dichotomy of materialism and idealism or spirituality which I think there's a secret third thing, which is hinged, hinged on language and the way that affects perception and affects the world.
On improvisational adaptational
I'm not a guy that gets tattoos. I'm more like a mutilation by flesh, eating parasite kind of guy. So when I was going through that the parasitic period of my life is that I'd never had expectations of life where somebody had told me that I wouldn't have flesh eating parasites mutilating me.
So just stay open-minded and improvisational and adaptational as things come, I think it's the best attitude to have rather than preconceived notion that that, that bump into the actuality or that are at odds with the actuality of life's unfolding.
The Ungoogleable Michaelanglo
Originating in The Netherlands, The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo is a creator of cosmic, comedic, and contemplative content, here to serve The Lore.
His work finds expression through visual art, written and spoken word, music, film, puppetry, uncanny impressions, performance, and Oracular Interactions.
He is the host and creator of the podcast Self Portraits As Other People, the narrator of Consciousness and The Bicameral Mind: The Julian Jaynes Society podcast, and the author of The He & The She of It, Impatient Transformations, and Lore Spores, Vol. 1.
Self Portraits as Other People
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Talking with HSURAE, artist, educator, bio-researcher on embodied questions, the art of making glass phantom limbs, mirror box therapy as speculative philosophy, and why the body is already a site of perpetual augmentation. On weaving high heels out of softened bone, gut microbiome colonialism, intergenerational sequencing with her grandmother, karaoke as mistranslation engines, and the limits of empathy as pedagogical virtue. On scar tissue as kintsugi, feces as a portal to human agency, and fibroblasts growing on glass not as object but as time-bound collaborator. Exploring tongue-based sight devices, bone extracts spun into jewelry, human ears grown on arms, and why all bodies are partially disabled, already entangled in the flows of medical devices, nationhood, and post-human speculation. On the ecological horrors of processing ultra-purified water, the irreducibility of artificial intelligence as an aesthetic quality, prayer rituals for semiconductor droughts, and what it means to make “Taiwanese art” in the age of AI. Also: on collecting rocks, deep time, and the slow, sacred practice of stitching of identity and memory into human hair.
On Spectrums
This dichotomy between abled bodies and disabled bodies is not necessary or a helpful differentiation - all of our bodies are essentially disabled or disability is something that all of us would have to come to terms with earlier or later. I see it really as a flow instead of distinct categorizations
On Art for Generating Questions
I studied occupational therapy and I worked as a therapist… but during that time I would visit art museums by myself. And in those visits I found that there was a sort of opening or space within art that seemed to be like inviting curiosity, inviting questions, and experimentation that I, I had not encountered in my previous studies… But there were moments during my education to study to be a therapist where I found myself asking questions that were unanswerable or coming up to the limits of empirical reasoning... I wasn't trying to look for answers, really. I was looking for a space where I could ask more questions…
On Ultra Pure Water
TSMC alone accounts for 38% of the country's daily water usage.
And it's not even enough. They still like purchase water from construction sites, for example, because the creation of AI chips requires like thousands of washing with what's called ultra pure water. So it's like water that is a thousand times pure than tap water.
On the Spiritual
I collect rocks wherever I go, and I wouldn't say I worship the rocks, but that seems to be the closest spiritual practice in my life.
Visit hsurae.com/ for more information.
Postscript from Rae:
Regarding the Phantom Limb Series: It came together with the help of many: TAs, classmates, faculty at RISD. In glassblowing, especially with large or experimental forms, it’s almost never a solo effort. There's an improvised choreography in the hot shop, and I leaned heavily on that. At the time, I didn’t always know how to properly credit that kind of fluid, mutual support. But over the years, I’ve become more intentional about acknowledging those contributions.
That ethos continues in my current work. Two of my ongoing projects are being developed under a loose, evolving collective called Lythologies. It’s not a fixed group, but rather a dispersed, flexible way of holding collaboration, one that shifts and grows with each project.
Also, I wanted to highlight two upcoming exhibitions:
-
Stories Written by the Sky, NTMoFA, Taiwan (10/25–12/14) (
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Human Machine, EWERK Luckenwalde, Germany (9/20–12/14)
Selections and images of some of Hsurae’s pieces discussed during interview
All photos credit: hsurae.com/
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Talking in-depth with writer, linguist, and anon AMRX Mark II, a dissident voice from the Pacific on escaping the cults of ideology, the yearning for identity in a "no place" like Hawaii, and what it means to walk away from ideological affiliations. Political beliefs as personal alibi, the sickness of escapism, the craving for heroes, identity formation and linguistics, cultural alienation and mimicry. Objectivism and disillusionment, the false theatre of Hawaiian sovereignty movements, the psy-op of Mauna Kea, the flattening hybridization of Pidgin, and Hawaii as a laboratory of empire. We talk about Substack as a space for intellectual deprogramming/engineering, the ritual of purging belief systems, and the existential loneliness that drives the search for meaning. Code-switching, mirror languages, sovereignty as theatre, linguistic education, the bridging importance of Sanskrit, to finally becoming your own guru—no cope, no hero, no group—emphasizing self-improvement and personal responsibility.
Excerpts
Hawaiian Local Identity
Here is where cultures seem to come to die. I see everyone around me losing their heritage. Like all the kids I grew up with they're all children of immigrants and they did not identify with their parents' languages or cultures at all. In many cases they couldn't speak their parents' language and they, were trying, they were like me.They were trying to find some alternative identity and so we were all alienated. And I think that's quite common here, but people just don't talk about it.
On Hawaiian Pigeon
Pidgin is a very complicated thing in Hawaii because people have this strange relationship with it. People use it as a marker of local identity, but it's also something that they're ashamed of…
As a thought experiment for decades now, I've thinking about how pidgin can become like this new fusion identity in Hawaii. And one idea I had for a stack was writing about how the Hawaiian sovereignty movement here totally rejects pidgin
On Mauna Kea as Psy-op
I think purpose of the psy-op was to distract from the military operations going on near Mauna Kea
On The Role of Social Dynamics in Political Affiliations
One of the major reasons I got sucked into all of this was just social, really. That's the sad thing. I am an extreme introvert, and I find it very difficult to talk to people. The thing about all these different cults is that if you believe that everyone, you deal with, is on the same page as you, then socialization becomes very easy.
Affiliations as Surrogate Identity
I've noticed that a lot of Objectivists are in the same, are in a similar position to me. There's like these Objectivists who come from non-white backgrounds and they want to be some sort of weird and some sort of new thing.
Ayn Rand herself and her own inner circle, they were all Jewish, but they were, they wanted to be something other than Jewish. They were trying to run away from it. And I was like them. I see that in hindsight now. I didn't wanna be Japanese. I wanted to be like this weird like new, what I've called new objectivist man, that was, not Japanese, not Asian, not anything. So all these ident, all these cult identities were attempts to run away from who I was and I just regarded so as just so cringe now, not that I embrace who I am, I still have identity issues, but I don't think signing up for a group and is really the answer anymore. But it, it was just so easy.
So I poured all my energy into learning Japanese and I went to university in Japan. And that was just a complete disaster. Because I realized I really did not fit in there. The language is not the problem. I could do the classes I could do the tests, I could write the papers.
That was not the issue. I, it made me realize how superficial my idea of Japanese identity was just because I could speak, read and write Japanese didn't mean I really belonged there. And I realized, yeah, this is just not for me anymore. And then I started doubling down on the Objectivist stuff, because as I just mentioned, objectivism is like a, is like for non main, like people of color…like this weird surrogate identity.
AMRX Mark II
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In conversation with Buddhist nun, scholar, and activist Ven. Karma Lekshe Tsomo, tracing her remarkable arc from surfing in 1950s Malibu to ordination under the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. On hitchhiking through Southeast Asia, surf contests in 1960s Japan, Zen and copying the Heart Sutra. On women’s traditions within Buddhist orders, surfing as meditation. On Vipassana, near fatal snake bites, to living with 348 percepts. On navigating the importance of ethics, on consciousness, a critique of secular mindfulness commodification. The importance of debate within Buddhism. On being kind, on Dharamsala, on grief and death, on supernormal powers, advice for finding a teacher, on comparative philosophy, on the current discourse revolving the struggle for Tibet. On the Holiness the Dalai Lama, on perseverance, on the listening to birds, on the current moment. On insight, on death, on the importance of ultimately living for others.
Excerpts
On Surfing
I found surfing quite spiritual because, you're alone out in the ocean. It's quiet. You get a totally different perspective on life because you're not one of the little ants running around. You've got a sort of meta view of human society, which is, quite instructive.
On Peace and Love
I'm still trying to figure that out. Especially in the current climate. How do you account for that? It seemed to me that peace and love were the answer and that everyone. If everyone were full of peace and love, then we would have a happy world. And so why? And then, of course, Buddhism was very helpful because it pointed out that it's our self cherishing, it's our obsession with our ourself that messes everything up.
People are struggling, clawing and scraping to get their own advantage. And of course, that interferes with all their relationships and destroys their personal happiness. And very few people really figure it out.
On Freedom
And when one of the monks cut my hair, it was the most freeing experience of my life. I saw my hair drop into my lap and I thought, whoa, free at last.
On the Dangers of Mindfulness without Ethics
You can kill someone very mindfully. You can rob a bank very mindfully. If you don't have any ethical foundations for your mindfulness practice, it can go all wrong.
On Action
Belief is cheap. You can say anything you want and even some of the greatest religious leaders have had doubts apparently, including up to and including Mother Teresa.
But how do we live our lives? That's the important thing.
How do we try to create happiness for ourselves and others?
How do we avoid harming ourselves and others?
These are the questions that Buddhism takes up.
On Supernormal Powers and Ethical Conduct
Super normal powers are no surprise if we train our minds well. Our minds are capable of so much more than we credit them for.
These are not the aim of Buddhist practice, but they are, there are many records legends and also texts that document attainments. The descriptions of supernormal powers occur in the very earliest strata.
On Reality
We take things to exist as they appear, but we all know that's false.
It's an illusion, this desk, it looks so solid. One match it's history, right? It's toast. So the Buddhists are very good at questioning the question, things like appearance and reality.
On Awareness
Consciousness is a string of conscious moments, from the moment of conception, it's only one moment back to the last moment of our previous lifetime. If we meditate we can track it back.
Every moment is precious. Listen to the birds - remember that human life is impermanent. That our time on this precious planet is limited.
That every moment is precious and we should do, try to make the most not waste even a moment. We can gain insight, awakening in this present moment.
Time Stamps
00:00 Introduction to Consciousness and Meditation01:10 A Personal Journey into Buddhism02:39 Early Encounters with Zen and Surfing07:20 Exploring Buddhism in Asia25:16 The Path to Ordination31:38 Finding Teachers and the Tibetan Tradition34:59 Advice on Choosing a Teacher37:19 The Importance of Choosing the Right Teacher38:41 Navigating Political and Cultural Challenges39:45 The Ongoing Struggle for Tibetan Freedom41:52 Balancing Political and Spiritual Perseverance44:20 Western vs. Eastern Buddhism48:59 Gender Disparities and Feminism in Buddhism56:06 The Role of Mindfulness and The Importance of Ethical Foundations01:00:31 Belief Systems and the Concept of God in Buddhism01:04:33 Supporting Buddhist Nonprofits and Education01:07:23 Supernormal Powers and Ethical Conduct01:12:18 Final Reflections and Advice
About Ven. Karma Lekshe Tsomo
Karma Lekshe Tsomo is a Buddhist nun, scholar, and activist. She has been a professor at the University of San Diego (USD) since 2000, teaching topics like Buddhism, World Religions, and Dying, Death, and Social Justice.
She co-founded the Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women (Sakyadhiata means daughters of Buddha) and is the founding director of the Jamyang Foundation, which supports the education of women and girls in areas of the Himalayas, Bangladesh, and elsewhere.
After studying at Dharamasala for 15 years, Dr. Tsomo completed her postgraduate work at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, obtaining a PhD in Comparative Philosophy in 2000. She has published in topics including women in Buddhism, death and dying, Buddhist philosophy, and Buddhist ethics.
Links
Jamyang Foundation
Sakyadhita
Photo Credit: Sakyadhita International Association
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Talking with poet, editor, and literary trickster anon Jasper Ceylon on the art of aesthetic sabotage and poetics in the age of algorithm. From anonymous pen names to deliberate hoaxes published to destabilize the contemporary poetry scene, Jasper dissects the decay of literary standards, using his surreal, very funny and on point fake poetry journal Echolalia, as a critical manifesto serving as both scalpel and mirror.
A self-described poetry fan first and foremost, Jasper satirizes the very world he inhabits, exposing identity-first editorial gatekeeping and the global flattening of taste. We talk about the ghost networks of the contemporary (poetry) world, the process in his rebellion; building a complete parallel poetic narrative world to dupe the editors.
Instagram poetry and grievance studies, Jasper doesn’t pull punches but neither is he cynical. A romantic dissident who wants to save humanity from an algorithm-dominated life of flattening dullness and mediocrity. We go deep on the state of publishing, the cult of identity, AI’s role in human (poetic) deadness, on the the fun polarizing Edward De Vere theory of Shakespearean authorship, the disappearance of true literary dissent, and the neoliberal endgame of cultural homeostasis. On men and marginalization, the phobia of criticism in artistic spaces, and the tragedy of becoming cosmopolitan in the most banal sense. On the poetics of evil, on Vanessa Place, the battle between light and dark, the oversupply of menstruation poems and apocalypse. On breaking free of guardrails on the true task of poetry: not to comply, but to break the spell.
On Mission
And I am conversely just trying to…help people live well, see through some of this programming, make more informed choices, not create infrastructure that isolates people and demoralizes them under the guise of uplifting others.
I'm trying to, if anything, onboard people to poetry, but to just get them to think very critically about the practices we currently have in place at this point in time right now.
On Being A Poet
But.. you just have to understand that as a poet you're gonna fly under the radar for a long while, potentially maybe your whole life. And if you're not cool with that, then become an Instagram poet. But if you wanna do something meaningful and you want to, actually take a serious go at this. You gotta be ready for a lot of disappointment upfront and potentially for the rest of your life.
On Poetics of Evil / Vanessa Place
To promote evil as the great sort of aesthetic agenda - I would promote the exact opposite… I don’t think crucifying people and institutions…under the guise of demonstrating strength is what we're trying to do here, because what is strength, quote unquote in artistic endeavor.
Save it for the f*g battlefield…I think it gets so messy when you take that on as your primary aim, as a creative you're really just a soldier in disguise. And those types can sometimes conceal it very well, but I think they're doing a gross injustice to their fellow man
On The Polarizing Debate surrounding Edward De Vere as Shakespeare
The De Vere stuff, because no one will listen to me talk about this anytime I try to talk about this in person, to anyone.
They give me that same look like they're just mortified. That I would suggest a country bumpkin couldn't write the the most immortal works in our language. But you even post this stuff on 4Chan's lit. board and all that, and they would just melt down over this idea.
What seems more realistic? A highly educated, noted poet of nobility with tons of money and connections to the most famous and let's say, accomplished academics in the London circles like Francis Bacon and stuff like that. It's either that guy doing this or a country bumpkin who can't even sign his own name.
Jasper’s Post Script Additional Notes and Links
My scorn for Vanessa Place is limitless. But for those interested in the essay discussed in the interview, and the theories that drive some of the very worst figures in poetry and culture-manipulation, consult the following: https://www.academia.edu/2778740/Radically_Evil_Poetics. And maybe treat yourself to one of Place's wretched Yoko Ono-esque conceptual art performance pieces while you're at it.
But for a more entertaining diversion re: Shakespeare, avail yourself to some of Alexander Waugh's YouTube content on Edward de Vere (there's a lot of it).
For a short-hand summary of the de Vere case, see: https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/top-reasons-why-edward-de-vere-17th-earl-of-oxford-was-shakespeare/. And for a supremely autistic (schizophrenic, maybe?) look at some of the finer details underlying the conspiracy, you might watch something like the following video: Henrie IX: Shakespeare, Edward de Vere, and Henry Wriothesley
In some ways, the potential "easter eggs" of this theory and de Vere's hidden lines in the sonnets and such inspired the ones I hid within Echolalia Review that are waiting to be discovered.
Lastly, I cited John Donne at one point as being involved in the Rosicrucian collaborative aspect of the theory (along with Bacon and Marlowe), but I meant John Dee.
Pick up a copy of: Echolalia
pere ube press
Jasper Ceylon Substack
Jasper Ceyon Biography
Equal parts “Ezra Pound if he were a Discord user” and 21st-century Ern Malley, Jasper Ceylon takes inspiration from the titans of English-language poetry, as well as its great satirists and provocateurs. As a poet, he’s been published extensively in magazines worldwide under his own name and many pen names, including “Adele Nwankwo,” “B. H. Fein,” and “Dirt Hogg Sauvage Respectfully.” He’s the author of Pere Ube’s literary cherry bomb/megaton nuke, "Echolalia Review: An Anti-Poetry Collection," but he’s also been traditionally published as a novelist and critic.
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Talking in-depth with author, publisher, and academic Udith Dematagoda, on his intellectual journey from post-punk bands to postwar literary writers, from international development contracts to pursing a PhD on Nabokov, from Scottish council estates to the specter of Marxist ghosts. A romantic, Udith shares his biography, the crossroads of class, diasporic experience, being driven not by ideology, but by aesthetic integrity. The son of a Sri Lankan political exile in Scotland, code-switching between posh-accented academia and the swear-punctuated slang of the personal, discovering reading as a lifeline from juvenile delinquency. On Agonist, his novel of post-internet disintegration, the imagination flooded by the digital hose. On the aesthetics of fascism, the dialectic between technology and masculinity, and the enduring value of Conrad. On the flattening tendencies of ideology and longing for transcendence. From literary engineering to integrity, on Neruda to Nabokov’s politics. On cosmopolitism, hybridization, from Vienna to Tokyo and back to novel publishin. On transgression and techno-pessimism, the diabolic nature of AI….
Excerpts
On Artistic Integrity
I'm an extremely romantic and impractical person, right? Artistic integrity is probably the most important thing to me, I think, because, my, as I said, my ambitions are just very like, artistic, right?
On Techo-Pessimism
They just come from the depths of hell. The true face of this horrid, diabolical kind of thing….I'm a complete technological pessimist.
I would describe myself as a sort of Luddite in the original sense, in the sense of I insist like the, just because one is you're able to do something. There's no sense. I think a lot of people. techno optimists are really motivated by hatred and raison du monde of human nature of creativity, of, everything that's human, right? And then this is a secret kind of motivation, but one that's really apparent to me…
I think it's because the people that are driving these things really have a sort of fundamental raison du monde towards something which they feel alienated by for whatever reason…
On Agonist
I was very frustrated about being on the internet and taking away from what I had to do.
Artistically, intellectually, et cetera, wasting time on the internet… And then I just decided I'm gonna write everything I see that's annoys me into this notebook. And I just filled that notebook up over a year.
[Agnoist] is a fever dream of the internet, which tries to confront how people try to communicate and just are not able to, and what underlies this thing, this kind of collective text that we're all offering, whether we like it or not. And how diabolical it is.
On Masculinity, Fascism, and Technology
So this is the book I've been working on for six years now on masculinity, fascism, and technology. The general thesis of the book is that fascism is equally an aesthetic philosophy as it is in ideology. It's why it describes an ideological aesthetic.
On International Development
And this isn't a controversial position to say that, international development is just rear guard colonialism, that's all it is. It's just soft power for rear, for the type of colonialism, which no longer requires colonial administrators with boots on the ground.
It just requires technical assistance and expertise and con consultants, et cetera.
USAID in particular, when I worked within that world was absolutely known to be not even thinly disguised kind of front for the securities state, the projects that they funded, et cetera. That's not that was common knowledge. USAID was just front basically for the American State Department and also the CIA and NSA, et cetera.
On Readership
I'm happy that there's people that read my work and they enjoy it, and that's fine. I don't really need to have the validation of what, whatever it is. I don't know, like the sort of journalistic class or like the academic class or what, whatever it is, I don't really care.
I'm not really that bothered by that. Honestly I would like that people read my work and that's fine, I think but attaining ambitions for me is setting it to accomplish something that I think is interesting artistically in getting as close to that as possible…
Agonist
Hyperidean Press
Udith Dematagoda
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Talking with novelist ARX-Han on the optimistic outcome, the counterbalance to techno-feudalism, the shifting Overton window, on deep (racial? / psychosexual?) anxieties of Western elites over China’s technological rise, transhumanist cults, the internet as a pathologization engine, the problem of male agency in a world trending toward simulation, the accelerating breakdown of ideological coherence, the future of literary fiction in an era of digital feudalism, the aesthetics of niche subcultures, on panpsychism for story building models, the seduction of AI worship, Grand Theft Auto as contemporary American reality. On paranoia, the next phase of cult formation, social engineering, why the next big cultural divide won’t be left vs. right but human vs. post-human, and why it’s enough to just be read by a small group of considered minds in a literary salon scattered across the digital ether… + more.
Excerpts
On American Social Engineering
“So I think the broad thing to understand is that my view is that Americans are the most propagandized population in the world, but the sophistication of that propaganda is so high that they have the inverse view, right?”
On Convergence
“And so I think that the structures of our consent manufacturing apparatus are much more sophisticated, distributed decentralized coded in a sort of implicit procedural logic and institutional logic that is takes quite a bit of time to disentangle and see clearly.
And one thing that's very fascinating to me is just the convergence between effective altruists and Silicon Valley defense tech bros.
Because they basically converged on the same foreign policy, which is just essentially American hegemony, right? And I just think it's very ironic that you know, I have this line in my head that you know, maybe it turns out that effective altruism was really just about killing Chinese people, right?”
On Literary Opportunity:
“ I've written about this before in terms of how liberalism has acted as a sort of identity shredder for Asian Americans, but the irony is, I think, because this is such an important historical moment in the geopolitical contest between East and West, but I think there's an opportunity to write fiction about it and literary fiction about it that's very interesting that taps into the vein of this present moment”
On Masculinity
“The solutions essentially require, probably technological reversal over and above anything else. I'm increasingly of mind that the ennui of the modern male is downstream of technological civilization itself.”
On the Optimistic Countervailing Force:
“The funniest optimistic outcome to me, the most hilarious outcome would be that various Chinese tech companies produce vast quantities of open source, AI and, robotics platforms that are then diffused throughout the world at scale.
And, that acts as a countervailing force that prevents us from entering full blown techno feudalism and concentration of power”
On America
“America just is like a Grand Theft Auto sketch…
Especially California, right? Like California is just like a GTA comedy routine where the most like crazy s**t just happens with consistent frequency, you read about something like, ‘Oh my God’, that's a feature, not a bug of California…
I think the strength of America as a system - Is this ability to do memetic recombination…”
On New Axis of Conflict
“I think the new axis of conflict will be pro and anti transhumanism slash AI worship and stuff like that. So I feel that a major transection of values is inbound. Something novel. And that, that kind of cuts across this conventional left right distinction in strange and discomforting ways.”
On Literary Privilege
“ And I think we shouldn't, I think writers, we shouldn't be so so damn greedy, and we should just say that’s, that's enough. Like this is already a privilege, you know? Like it's already it's a privilege to be read by a small number of considered readers, and to be taken seriously, and to engage in dialogue with others.”
More
ARX-Han @ www.DecentralizedFiction.com
2024 Interview with ARX-Han on his novel Incel https://www.leafbox.com/interview-arx-han/
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Kevin Dolan AKA Bennett's Phylactery joins me to discuss the drive for sovereignty as a generational project, building parallel institutions with the EXIT group, doxxing and digital resilience, the perils of modernity, the limits of incentives in shaping human behavior, the existential crisis of demographic collapse, the Natal Conference, the social cost of depopulation, Korea’s demographic time bomb, fertility as a lagging KPI, IQ Shredders, the absurdity of treating people like meat robots, cultural survival in an era of decline, the challenge of scaling without losing coherence, the delicate nature of reproduction, pandas and human mating habits, the intersection of tech and tradition in reversing demographic decline, and more.
Excerpts
On wanting sovereignty
“And we realized that what we were really , what we were really about, the reason that we were insisting on, running our mouths on the internet and refusing to do these things. The thing that was behind that was that we want to have grandkids, that we want to instill our values into our kids to have sovereignty over our families. Because we saw the acid of modernity just eating anything that was not, anything that was not protected that had no defenses... “
On the Risks of Depopulation
“ And what that cashes out to is that basically the Koreans, there's gonna be four great grandchildren for every hundred Koreans. It's that's essentially the extinction of a coherent Korean culture.”
“ It's not it's not like population growth in reverse where it's oh, the economy slows down a little bit or it gets a little bit harder. It's it's like the thing flips upside down. It, it stops working fundamentally.”
On Pandas, Human Fertility, Meat Robots and Incentives
“I think that is very instructive in terms of the comparison that I've drawn. is to like, the pandas. If the pandas are not having sex, and you say I know what we'll do, we'll hook them up to electrodes and every time they fail to mate, we're gonna zap them with these electrodes, or we're gonna dump some if they, if he tries to go mount the female we'll dump some kibble on him.”
And it's that kind of crude incentive system just really fails to understand the dynamics of why people do things and we are not meat robots that can be incentivized that way. And we in particular sex and reproduction is like this. It's very delicate and very open process. It's this thing where you have to get loose, get pre rational, get a little crazy and a little drunk. And to, to get people to do that for some money or like for these really pecuniary pedestrian reasons I think just completely misunderstands human nature.”
On KPIs
Do we know if EXIT is doing what it should be doing? Is it fertility? Is it kids? I think it's grandkids because grandkids, and that's a terrible KPI, right, because you don't know, it's not in your hands, right? It's in your kid's hands, but yeah you don't know if what you did worked until 20 years later.”
Links
Exit
Natal Conference
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Talking with repeat guest, author and local Hawaii resident Charles Hugh Smith on the importance of living in the real world, insights from the scientific process, experimentation for incremental change, building your own utility, self reliance, behavioral modification, questioning the mythology of progress, anti-progress, technology worship, the value of something, economic externalities, Aina, AI and AI Gods, Digital Ice Nice, social change, social engineering, collective value systems, and strategies for staying sane in a digital world…
Excerpts
“ Try to live in the real world as much as possible because then you're more likely to avoid the derangement. And again, a back to basics is my approach. Question everything that you're doing your behaviors. Are they benefiting you or not? And if they're not benefiting you, then how can you modify them? Incremental is the way to go. To use the Daoist phrase: The journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step. Everything we do to improve our lives is incremental. It's possible to revolutionize your life. And if that opportunity exists and for sure, go for it. But for most of us, incremental is how we change.
Accepting that we can change a lot by our behaviors, what we think of as priorities and incentives. That's how we change. We don't necessarily need a new life, per se. We just need to change our behaviors and what we value.”
“ And I think the problem is not technology per se. It's our worship. In other words we're like blindly obedient to it. And in other words to the idea in the mythology of progress.”
“ Because there are limits and to claim there that you have limitless power is to set yourself up for the fall…. it's actually a psychological failing as well. You don't have to believe in karma or religion. If you aspire or claim godlike powers, then you're setting yourself up for self destruction just psychologically because it's disconnected from reality”
“ I tend to see things more as organic - that these systems are complicated.
There's a lot of dynamics. We're not really in a position to control as much as we think is, my view and that, it's better to let people make their own decisions. And if it's if it stops working for them, then they're gonna open their mind and be willing to try something else.”
Follow Charles Hugh Smith @ oftwominds.com
On Twitter @@chsm1th
On Substack @ charleshughsmith.substack.com/
Timestamps
02:18 Exploring Solar Energy: Projects and Experiments
Charles shares his experiences with solar energy projects, discussing the economic challenges of solar power at small scales and importance of self-reliance, focusing on reducing dependence on fragile global supply chains.
10:04 Behavioral Changes for Energy Efficiency
Charles details his efforts of behavioral changes rather than technology.
23:56 The Value of Experimentation
He emphasizes the importance of experimentation as a tool for understanding and adapting to change, whether in personal resilience, self-employment, or daily consumption
29:13 Questioning the Mythology of Progress
Charles challenges the conventional view that technological advancements and economic growth always equal progress. He argues that progress can sometimes be anti-progress when it degrades quality of life or damages the planet.
33:36 Objective Analysis of Progress and Anti-Progress
To break free from blind faith in progress, Charles advocates for an objective assessment of technological and economic developments, considering both benefits and negative consequences rather than uncritically accepting advancements.
36:14 Technology Worship and Its Consequences
Technology is often worshiped as an unstoppable force, arguing that society needs to question its trajectory rather than passively accepting every technological development as progress.
43:35 AI and the Mythology of Progress
Charles discusses how AI fits into the broader mythology of progress, highlighting the misplaced belief that AI advancements are inherently beneficial. He critiques the economic incentives driving AI development and the illusion of intelligence in machine learning models.
47:28 The Limits of AI and Human Intelligence
He examines the limitations of AI, particularly its inability to truly understand or possess human-like intelligence. He also critiques the misconception that intelligence is purely rational, emphasizing the role of emotions in human cognition.
50:27 A New Mythology for the 21st Century
Charles proposes that humanity needs a new guiding mythology that acknowledges limits rather than blindly embracing technological expansion. He suggests shifting status away from excessive consumption and toward sustainable, meaningful contributions to society.
01:03:21 Social Change and the Role of Technology
He explores how social change happens organically with contrasts of top-down efforts to engineer social change.
01:08:42 Staying Sane in a Digital World
In closing, Charles advises treating the digital world cautiously—like plutonium—while prioritizing real-world experiences and behavioral changes. He stresses the importance of small, incremental steps toward resilience and personal well-being.
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Talking with British historian and folklorist Dr. Simon Young on the enduring presence of supernatural experiences in human life, with a focus on his folk lore project, the Fairy Census—a vast collection of contemporary fairy encounter accounts. We explore the shifting nature of fairy lore across time, the interplay between cultural perception and the supernatural, and the deeper psychological and sociological dimensions of these experiences.
Young shares insights from his research, addressing theories of altered states, memory, and the collective unconscious while tackling criticisms of his work and methods. He discusses the history and revival of the Fairy Investigation Society, its eccentric origins in the early 20th century, and its modern role in documenting encounters that defy conventional understanding.
The conversation extends to the broader role of folklore in human consciousness, the evolution of belief systems, and its relevance to human society.
From fairies to the mechanisms of belief, from historical patterns to personal narratives, Dr Young provides a fascinating lens to understand myth and reality, exploring why stories of the otherworld persist—and what they reveal about us.
Dr. Young is a Cambridge-educated historian based at the International Studies Institute in Florence.
Excerpts:
“In terms of human evolution, there seems to be a certain number of people who have very frequent supernatural experiences. Suppose that somewhere deep inside me, I have a conviction that the supernatural matters, that it's not an embarrassing part of Paleolithic society that sometimes somehow made it through to the present. It is something that to some extent to have healthy lives…
What I mean by that is that supernatural experiences, I think, are just part of human programming and increasingly in a rational age, we've started to edit this out leave it to one side. It's become an embarrassment on many levels. I think the experience that people have has a real importance in their lives, and I think it also has real importance in our species…
Individuals and society more generally have to be able to absorb and particularly in an age when religion is being rejected and ridiculed these more personal versions of spirituality I think become incredibly important…
And I think it's useful to look and ask ourselves, well, what is this really for? What does it do?
Timestamps
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02:23 - Exploring Fairy Lore and the Fairy CensusDr. Young describes his background in medieval history and his transition into folklore studies, particularly his fascination with fairy lore and the creation of the Fairy Census.
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04:32 - Transition from Medieval History to FolkloreHe explains how a serious illness in his 30s led him to reevaluate his academic focus, eventually leading him to folklore and supernatural studies.
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05:48 - Understanding Fairies Through TimeDr. Young discusses how the concept of fairies has evolved over centuries, influenced by cultural shifts, religious ideas, and artistic depictions.
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13:37 - Contemporary Views on FairiesDr. Young highlights modern perceptions of fairies, including the influence of Theosophy, Disney, and neo-pagan traditions in shaping current beliefs.
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20:57 - The Influence of Walter Evans WentzHe introduces Evans Wentz, an American folklorist who documented fairy encounters across Celtic regions but controversially attempted to prove their existence.
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30:23 - The Role of Supernatural Experiences in Human EvolutionDr. Young theorizes that supernatural experiences may have been an essential part of early human societies, with a small percentage of the population naturally predisposed to such encounters.
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35:36 - The Fairy Census: Goals and MethodologyHe explains the structure and purpose of the Fairy Census, aiming to collect 2,000 detailed accounts to analyze patterns in supernatural experiences.
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40:08 - Challenges and Criticisms of the Fairy CensusDr. Young acknowledges the self-selecting nature of his survey participants and discusses how this affects the objectivity and scientific validity of his data.
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48:01 - Memorable Accounts from the Fairy CensusHe shares standout stories from the Census, including a man who repeatedly submits his childhood fairy encounter, demonstrating how deeply these experiences remain ingrained in memory.
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55:42 - The Role of Supernatural Experiences in Modern LifeDr. Young reflects on the growing rejection of institutional religion and how personal supernatural encounters might fulfill a psychological or spiritual need in contemporary society.
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01:02:48 - Boggarts and Other Folkloric ResearchHe delves into his research on Boggarts, a distinct type of supernatural entity in northern English folklore, separate from traditional fairies.
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01:04:25 - Final Thoughts and Future DirectionDr. Young expresses his belief that supernatural experiences are a meaningful part of human culture and invites listeners to contribute their own encounters to the Fairy Census.
Links
Dr Simon Academia Site / Fairy Census Submission
Boggart and Banshee Podcast
Books
Note: Illustration above from Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing circa 1786 William Blake 1757-1827 Presented by Alfred A. de Pass in memory of his wife Ethel 1910 Source
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I had the pleasure of speaking with George Lee, creator of Chez Jorge and author of A Gong's Table, to uncover the profound connection between food, culture, and identity. His book, a stunning collaboration with photographer Laurent Hsai, takes readers on a heartfelt journey through Taiwanese cuisine, deeply influenced by his grandfather, Buddhist traditions, and his experiences navigating life across cultures.
At the heart of the book lies a tribute to George's grandfather, whose round wooden table symbolized the warmth and unity of family gatherings during his childhood. Together, we delve into George’s reflections on family, the evolution of their culinary traditions after his grandfather's passing, and the rich tapestry of Taiwan's gastronomy. From Buddhist vegetarian practices to the creative impulses that shaped his storytelling, George brings a deeply personal and insightful perspective to the table.
George’s book is a beautiful love letter to Taiwan and a quietly uncompromising work of personal and national exploration, guiding readers through Taiwan’s vibrant food culture with a rhythm as steady and intimate as footsteps. The conversation expands on this in a personal way with interesting tangents.
Topics Discussed
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The comfort and nostalgia of home-cooked meals.
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The origins of "Chez Jorge" as a reflection of cultural and personal exploration.
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How his grandfather, Ah Gong, inspired his culinary philosophy.
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The impact of learning vegetarian cooking from Buddhist nuns.
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Fusing modern influences with traditional Taiwanese practices.
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His creative collaboration with photographer Laurent to tell Taiwan's story.
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Future projects blending food, craftsmanship, and culture.
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Tradition, innovation, and the transcendent power of food as a connection to home and heritage.
Excerpts from Interview
“The book was exactly like a learning process. I didn't have a clear idea of what I was gonna write until it was written.”
“ Looking at new things with old eyes and to feel the changes”
“ I think it's always like that when you're too comfortable with your own surroundings, there's not that much to write about anymore.”
“It's sort of the feeling I wanted to capture with my cooking was just, like a sort of home cooking that is comforting that brings you home.”For more information: A Gong's Table
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Talking with author, Jasun Horsley, on navigating the first and second Matrix, mirror neurons and telepathic messages, goats and autonomy, spiritual seeking and self-invention, the pitfalls of psychedelics, Castaneda and the shamanic path, the challenges of building groups, conspiratainment and discernment, the search for authentic connection, the art of writing as a tool for connecting to the soul, the tensions of identity and integration, autism as lens for deeper substrata, Dostoevsky and embodying the psyche, the limits of knowledge and the beauty of not knowing, the bi-directionality of communication, making the ethereal tangible, sending beacons of lightness in the dark ocean of human experience, the Manuopticon, Children of Job, clearing the bush on the pathless path and more.
Excerpts
“Changing the world is, to me, is a red herring and a really bad idea, the desire to change it. I don't see any evidence that the world changes. I think it just proceeds along certain tracks”
“The thing about discernment is, as I've said a number of times recently, You don't need to believe anything in order to know what to do…Like we can guided by something other than belief. And that would then include knowledge. Because knowledge is, a lot of knowledge is belief. There's some knowledge that's not.”
“If I find the right words, I will actually kind of midwife that insight into conscious awareness….I'm trying to make something unconscious conscious using language to do it.”
“ If we want to know ourselves, it's not enough just to study ourselves, you know, self examination, said Socrates, but that's not, that's not sufficient for knowing oneself. Right? We need to actually be seen by others and then see what others are seeing in us by the dialogues.
“Having a dialogue with one's soul isn't just about writing or talking to oneself. It's about talking to others and connecting to others at a deep level so that they will mirror back to us the state of our soul or the phase that our souls are in or whatever our souls are trying to let into our awareness or bring into our awareness. That's all, that all depends on some sort of group dynamic.“
“ I'm trying to send out beacons…fire beacons into the sky and hope that somebody who's out there floating on the dark ocean… shipwrecked, will see it and swim in this direction.”
Interview Time Stamps:
-
00:26 IntroductionIntroducing Jasun Horsley and the themes of spiritual seeking, writing, and navigating deeper realities.
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05:21 Preserving the Future and ProjectsJasun discusses his “Land Made Man” project in Galicia and the importance of creating spaces for refuge and connection.
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11:43 Spiritual Path and Writing JourneyFrom shamanism to work in the “real world”, Jasun traces his spiritual and creative evolution.
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22:41 The Second Matrix and Spiritual SeekingExamining the traps of spiritual seeking and the illusion of escaping societal conditioning.
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26:15 Early Wake-Up Calls and Castaneda's InfluenceJasun recounts his first transformative experiences and their connection to Castaneda’s teachings.
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37:30 Discernment and Belief SystemsJasun discusses the importance of skepticism and the dangers of misplaced beliefs.
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45:43 Conspiratainment and DistractionsExploring the allure and pitfalls of conspiracy theories and their role in modern culture.
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01:14:53 Autism and PerceptionThe link between autism and deeper, more open engagement with reality.
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01:30:03 Sending Beacons - Challenges of Social ConnectionThe struggle to find authentic connections and the hope of finding kindred souls.
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01:46:44 The Role of MentorshipDiscussing the complexities of mentoring and the evolving dynamic between mentor and mentee.
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01:50:11 Filmmaking, Groups, Future ProjectsJasun reflects on his film The Light of Dead Stars, the joy of teamwork, and aspirations for creative collaborations.
Links:
-
Children of Job by Jasun Horsley
-
Books by Jasun Horsley
Opening Song: "Freight Train" by Elizabeth Cotten / Cover by Aaron Sheppard
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Rurik Skywalker (Rolo), author of The Slavland Chronicles, invites us into a labyrinth of ideas where politics, metaphysics, and culture collide. With a personal background bridging Russia and the U.S., Rurik critiques societal norms, examines cultural contrasts, and unveils his provocative "convergence theory," positing an eerie unity among global powers behind the façade of conflict. Known for his deep dives into metaphysical topics and political theory, shares insights that challenge conventional thinking and invite readers to explore the world beyond traditional paradigms.
From altered states of consciousness to the metaphysics of rebellion, Rurik intertwines mysticism and geopolitics in a way that centers resistance with art forms.
Much of the dialogue revolves around Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker, a haunting meditation on human longing and transformation. Rurik likens himself to the film’s enigmatic guide, the Stalker, leading his readers and listeners into “The Zone,” a metaphysical landscape where hidden truths and forbidden insights await discovery.
Stalker is not just a film but a starting point for the conversation to delve into deeper layers of Rurik's controversial philosophies and a must-listen for anyone who seeks to understand this intriguing and controversial writer.
Excerpts from Interview:
“ The wars are fake, but the massacres are real.”
“If you say something that they don't want to hear, they will come after you. They'll come after your friends. They will they will punish you for having the wrong views. And for me, that was the final red pill about America.
“This so called civic society doesn't exist. Participative democracy doesn't exist. The power, so called power of the people's will or the media, also a hoax. That's when I realized actually everything is run by gangs of secret transnational special secret police. And that's sort of the core paradigm or the, or the core view that I operate from when I write my blog”
“Art can literally send you into an induced, altered state from which, maybe you could actually discover these hidden aspects of reality, hidden sources of power within yourself. This is what we need. We need sources of power. We need this sort of fuel, this mystical fuel.”
Time Stamp Highlights
- 01:07 | Exploring Stalker and the Zone
How Tarkovsky’s masterpiece shapes Rurik’s vision of resistance and discovery.
- 06:42 | Cultural Critique of America
The transactional superficiality of Western interactions versus the deep, enduring connections of Russian culture.
- 19:23 | Convergence Theory and Geopolitics
Rurik on Convergence theory: “THE WARS ARE FAKE, BUT THE MASSACRES ARE REAL.”
- 42:24 | Russian Media and Propaganda
Insights into navigating the disinformation labyrinth in the digital age.
- 01:06:09 | Plato’s Dystopia
How Platonic ideals, once heralded as blueprints for order, may serve as tools of elite control.
- 01:16:05 | Dionysian Rites and Music as Rebellion
The ancient roots of mysticism and its potential to ignite uprisings in the modern world.
- 01:18:36 | The Metaphysics of Rebellion
Tapping into altered states to reclaim individual and collective agency.
Slavland Chronicles
Note: Sound sample in interview from Edward Artemiev - Meditation (Stalker Movie Soundtrack) 1979 . Interview edited slightly - removed filler words, false starts, and repetitions to enhance audio clarity and overall flow for sound clarity and listener enjoyment.
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In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Matt Cardin, an accomplished writer, editor, and higher education professional known for his profound exploration of creativity, spirituality, and the mysterious intersections of religion and horror.
Matt’s work delves deeply into non-duality, the paranormal, and dystopian cultural trends, offering unique perspectives on the connections between creativity, spirituality, and life purpose.
I first encountered his writing and teaching, particularly through his books A Course in Demonic Creativity: A Writer’s Guide to the Inner Genius and the upcoming Writing at the Wellspring: Creativity, Life Purpose, Nonduality, and the Daemon Muse. I had the privilege of participating in his Writing at the Wellspring course, which provided transformative perspectives on creative practice.
Matt Cardin is an author known for delving into the realms of horror and the metaphysical. His widely acclaimed fiction books, including To Rouse Leviathan and What the Daemon Said, focus on the convergence of horror with religion and creativity.
With a Ph.D. in leadership and an M.A. in religious studies, Matt brings a richly layered understanding to these topics. A native of the Missouri Ozarks, he has lived in Texas and now resides in North Arkansas with his wife, where he continues his work of thoughtful cultural and creative exploration.
Connect with Matt Cardin @
https://mattcardin.com/
https://www.livingdark.net/
Time Stamps:
01:48 Introduction and Opening Remarks 01:52 Journals and Life Mission 02:48 Exploring Life Purpose and Creativity 03:34 Writing and Creativity 07:52 Rebecca West and Patterns 09:11 Understanding Non-Duality 13:21 Non-Duality and Creativity 15:42 Discovering Non-Duality 21:32 Meditative Practices and Teachers 25:26 The Monastic Option and Cultural Preservation 34:20 Tuning into the Muse 36:37 Effortless Action and Creative Quietude 37:35 Exploring Western and Eastern Perspectives on Consciousness 38:04 The Concept of God and Mental Projections 40:04 Houston Smith and the Perennial Philosophy 43:00 Horror in Religion and Spirituality 43:46 Lovecraft vs. Ligotti: External vs. Internal Horror 46:08 The Intersection of Horror and Spirituality 46:28 Religion as a Cosmic Order and Its Horrific Potential 55:50 The Wellspring Book and Future Plans 57:48 Final Thoughts
Excerpts from Interview:
On Non Dual
“ Where is the actual boundary between what I'm calling myself and what I'm calling everything else? When you really start to investigate that in a first person sense, that's when the magic eye picture suddenly gains that added depth. And your mind is blown.”
On Religion, Horror
You can see the horror in religion and you can see the religion in horror…
You're playing with fire when you're playing with religion because it creates a world. And then there's this infinitude that it also lets in that is going to blow up that world. You might receive that as horror. You might receive that as joy…
Religion is a perturbing or disturbing of the universe, including the universe that is oneself and the entire conception that goes with it that is provided by the religion to possibility to tip over from horror or to bliss or whatever is right there.”
On Life Mission, Creativity
Make a monastery out of your life, a monastic preservation and cultural transmission activity, the mission of your life here in the world. What seeds are you going to plant that a future civilization might find of use? What could you contribute to some future phoenix rising from the ashes of the present order?
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Benjamin Lucas, an experienced private tutor and educator, brings a wealth of insight from years of teaching at some of Europe’s most prestigious boarding schools.
Born in Newcastle and raised in Manchester, Benjamin attended a local grammar school before pursuing a dual passion for academics and sports as a scholar at Durham University. During his teenage years, he represented England at the national level and captained one of the most successful lacrosse teams outside North America.
After university and a year abroad studying languages, Benjamin embarked on a rigorous school-based teacher training program in former mining towns and economically disadvantaged communities. This challenging experience nearly derailed his journey but ultimately solidified his commitment to education. Over the past decade, Benjamin has taught languages, humanities, ethics, sports, and even practical "common sense" at elite European boarding schools. With an unrelenting drive to improve his craft, he views teaching as a noble vocation, continually refining his methods and philosophies.
In this interview, we explore the state of modern education, Benjamin's rich family heritage of educators, and the hurdles of breaking free from traditional educational models.
Benjamin shares his alternative approach to education, focusing on personalized learning, the centrality of the family, and the importance of spirituality and discipline. He examines and contrasts various educational philosophies, including Montessori, Waldorf, and public school systems, while emphasizing the critical role of parents in nurturing a child's intellectual and moral development.
In addition, Benjamin provides actionable advice for parents looking to enhance their children’s education—through curated reading, personalized tutoring, and cultivating a lifelong love of learning. This thought-provoking conversation offers valuable insights into innovative educational practices and serves as a guide for those passionate about shaping the future of learning.
Time Stamps / Chapters
00:29 Introduction and Background01:12 Generational Influence in Education02:41 Dissident Perspective on Education03:42 Challenges in Modern Education04:53 Private Tutoring and Its Value06:29 Experience at Elite Boarding Schools16:04 Parental Role in Education27:13 Balancing Discipline, Creativity, Learning 43:31 Final Thoughts and Recommendations
Full Transcript @ Leafbox.com
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Tom Davidson-Marx is the co-founder of Aloha Sangha, a secular meditation group based out of Honolulu, Hawaii.
In this conversation he shares journey through Buddhism, from his first meditation retreat to becoming a monk in Sri Lanka, and his later experiences balancing spirituality with everyday life. He shares profound insights on meditation practices from intensive practice, the challenges faced, and the benefits of integrating spiritual teachings into a balanced life.
Tom also touches on his eclectic approach to teaching meditation and the establishment of Aloha Sangha, a non-traditional meditation group focused on love and compassion. This conversation provides a deep dive into the practical and philosophical aspects of Buddhism for lay and experienced individuals.
Connect with Tom @ AlohaSangha.com
Time Stamps:
00:31 Introduction and Retirement Reflections01:15 First Meditation Retreat Experience06:43 Life Journey and Early Influences08:08 Discovering Buddhism and First 10-Day Retreat10:35 Becoming a Monk in Sri Lanka18:24 Deep Dive into Meditation Practices24:55 The Bliss and Challenges of Meditation33:32 The Ultimate Goal: Nirvana and Liberation42:43 Simple Steps to Achieve Bliss in Meditation43:11 Analyzing the Self: Deconstructing the Notion of Self44:10 Meditation for Beginners: Awareness and Intention44:51 The Evolution of Meditation Practices46:32 The Dark Night of the Soul: Understanding and Coping51:08 Grounding Techniques in Meditation01:06:36 The Importance of Balance in Life and Meditation01:13:29 Future Plans and Non Dual Spiritual Reflections
Quotes of Interest
On The Purpose
So the whole point of Buddhism is to become a better person such that you actually give back and are compassionate and help other people. That's the goal.
On Meditation
Meditation is something that needs to be done with a lot of care and a lot of understanding of what is actually happening….you can't just like ignore everything and think meditation is going to answer all your questions, all that, you know, be the answer to all your problems or concerns or whatever.
On Mental Colonization
you start to notice how much mental energy was bound up with, fruitless ruminations over the past and equally fruitless preoccupations with the future…. the notion starts to form that what we're taking as the feedback loop from our mind , what we're evaluating and what we're judging and what we're comparing, is only a very small part of our of our mind, and it's the part, unfortunately, that has colonized the rest of it.
On the Non Dual
Noticing the non dual nature of that, and to me the non dual nature means I don't really have to go outside of my own personal experience to have profound experiences, because it's already profound right now, right here, right now, it's already done, like, we've already crossed the finish line, there's nothing, something that we think we need to do is extra.
Transcript @ Leafbox.com
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In this interview with Andrew Thomson, a Scottish seasoned professional in the energy sector, we delve into the multifaceted landscape of oil, renewable energy, and their global implications through a personal lens.
Andrew shares his journey from working in the oil industry over 20 years to recently transitioning into nuclear and wind energy sectors. Through his experiences, he provides insights into the socioeconomic impact of oil, the challenges of transitioning to renewable energy, and the complexities of global politics that intertwine with the energy sector.
Exploring Andrew's experiences working offshore in locations like Nigeria and Azerbaijan, the discussion uncovers the substantial influence of hydrocarbons and the cultural, socio-economic, and safety developments within the oil sector.
The discussion delves into the critical role of energy across modern life, impacting everything from education to communication, while critiquing governmental actions on energy policies and advocating for a balanced energy strategy, similar to Japan's where currently works in setting up Wind Turbine Platforms (using much of the same technology as oil rigs).
Furthermore, the dialogue highlights the philosophical and challenging practical shifts toward renewables, exploring political and economic challenges in this transition.
Through Andrew's perspective, one can try to better attempt to begin to understand the global energy politics, the necessity of interdisciplinary approaches in energy careers, and the shifting dynamics in the energy sector.
Time Stamps
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00:00 The Importance of Energy in Modern Life
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01:00 Introducing Andrew: From Oil to Climate-Friendly Energy
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01:46 Andrew's Background and Career Journey
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02:38 Life and Work in the Oil Industry
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07:34 Challenges and Dangers of Offshore Drilling
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10:54 The Culture and Lifestyle of Oil Workers
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20:58 Global Perspectives: Working in Africa and Beyond
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23:58 Corruption and Local Interactions in the Oil Industry
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38:09 A Costly Mistake and Cultural Reflections
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38:54 Corruption and Anti-Corruption Measures
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40:09 Cultural Differences and Acceptance
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41:13 Colonial Legacy and Historical Perspectives
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43:41 Nationalized vs. Private Oil Companies
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45:46 Transition to Renewable Energy in Japan
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46:12 Challenges in the Oil Industry
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48:22 Geopolitics and Energy Policies
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56:43 Experiences with Government Agencies
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01:03:56 Future Prospects and Peak Oil Debate
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01:08:06 Final Thoughts on Energy and Policy
Highlights and Quotes of Interest
On Energy Source Mixes
Japan has a long term vision.
It has a vision of a percentage mix of nuclear fossil fuels, renewables, whereas I feel like I'm fairly against it in my home country, in the UK, because we don't have a long term plan. We've had four prime ministers in the last two years. One of them wanted to build eight nuclear power stations, the next one to start fracking.
I believe in an energy mix. I think there's a lot of irresponsibility talked about these days in terms of the energy transition. I do think there should be an energy mix.
And then the one now wants to quadruple our offshore wind capacity in eight years, which is impossible. It's quite nonsensical. It's quite short term thinking. I'm not anti wind, I'm not pro oil, I'm not anti or pro any, anything. What I'm pro is a science based, long term, non subsidy, non corruption based market solution.
On Incentives in Oil Vs “Renewables”
So right now, it seems like oil is completely negative and then offshore wind is completely positive. You look at the motivations behind companies putting in offshore wind turbines or the service companies exactly the same as motivations behind all companies.
Neither one is doing them. For anything other than to make money. And I think it's simplistic and a little bit silly to think that the boss of an oil company is some sort of J. R. Ewing, person that likes to run over puppies on the way home and the boss of an electricity company or a turbine installation company or whatever is some sort of, sandal wearing saint that doesn't care about money. Everyone in pretty much, I would say any corporation, that statistic about men are CEOs, they're psychopaths. All they care about is money. And I think there are a lot of like there's a lot of talk about subsidies in [renewables]
On Oil’s Beastly Nature
It only takes, one ignition source and then you're on top of a fireball…potential that the entire thing can blow up underneath your feet.
On Life without Oil
It's the world we have is impossible to have without oil. Sure. You can reduce it. It's going to run out eventually one day anyway.
So reducing it is not a bad thing, but to pretend that you can just press stop and then you can put in a wind turbine is nonsensical. And the politicians know it's nonsensical as well.
The sheer scale of, Hydrocarbon involvement in our modern industrial life is so incredibly difficult to untangle.
There's literally nothing more important than our energy because it ties into the availability of education and medicine and travel and communication. Right, without. some form of mass energy production. We're right back to the medieval ages.
On The British State
I speak from a very UK point of view because it's my country, it's my home. I feel As ever, the British state works against the British people, not for the British people, which is a contrast to some of the countries that we may look down our noses on a little bit more as not developed, where, and Japan is a great example of this, where Japan seems to do things for the benefit of Japanese people, which seems to be a controversial idea back home.
Learning from Travel
This is part of, traveling. You see so many countries where people are so proud of their country. Nigerians were some of the most proud people I think I've ever met, and it's the same in Japan. And I worry the direction our country's going, both the UK and the US, when we were raising a generation of children who are being taught to be embarrassed by where they come from. Though I really feel like in the West we've made a mistake over the years in trying to impose our way of looking at the world on other cultures.
Post Interview Notes / Links from Andrew
Here are some relevant links that might be of interest:
"Empire of Dust", a fascinating documentary widely referenced online, but with no major release I don't think, that shows interaction between a Chinese contractor and locals in the DRC. It's a perfect example of culture clash, the strength in the documentary being there is no western-style narrative, it's simply two very different cultures interacting honestly with each other. The film-maker is Belgian which is particularly interesting given their colonial history in the DRC.
Watch @ https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5gdfm4
I can particularly recommend Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness if you're interested in the dark side of colonialism, or any history of DRC or Zaire as it was. One of my favourite films is Apocalypse Now, which along with the book perfectly makes the point I was trying to, which is how these cultures are manifestly different from ours, and any attempt to convert or run these societies in a western way will ultimately end up in failure, unless it's done by complete dominance, which of course, is wrong. It's a subject I find really interesting, and my experiences in Africa really changed how I view the world.
On Energy Prices “Strike Prices” and Renewables
Some links explaining the Strike Price for electricity set through the CfD (Contract for Difference) mechanism that guarantees a specific rate for electricity to renewables companies.
https://www.iea.org/policies/5731-contract-for-difference-cfd
https://www.eurelectric.org/in-detail/cfds_explainer/
It's quite hard to find a non-biased article explaining this, but the basic mechanism is:
What isn't always mentioned is the "top-up" when the price falls is paid to the generators by the consumer, in the UK at least, in the form of a levy on the electricity price. Which is fine in theory to have a set electricity price, but currently the UK has the 3rd highest electricity costs in the world:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-electricity-by-country
On British Embassy Support (Weapons:Yes / Hydrocarbons: No)
UK government ending support for oil and gas sector abroad:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-announces-the-uk-will-end-support-for-fossil-fuel-sector-overseas
But no issue promoting UK weapons manufacturers:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/3/15/uk-spent-1-3m-on-security-for-worlds-biggest-weapons-fair
Subsidies provided to the oil and gas industry in the US: (this can be complicated to assess because the IMF considers environmental and health costs after production as an effective subsidy, whereas the OECD and the IEA do not)
https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs
Correction on Refinery Capacity in Nigeria
I was slightly mistaken, there is some refinery capacity in Nigeria, in fact it's the highest in all of Africa, however it is still around half of what Houston alone produces per day.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13203-018-0211-z
On Oil Piracy / Theft (Discussed During Interview as Another Source for Danger / Volatility / Environmental Damage)
Oil pipeline theft still seems to be a problem in Nigeria sadly:
https://www.pipeline-journal.net/news/explosion-nigeria-oil-pipeline-kills-12-shell-blames-crude-oil-theft-tragedy
On Working in the Pubic Sector
I was thinking about one of your last questions afterwards, whether I'd ever work for the government. You know, I would actually love it, to be able to make some type of positive impact, I'd really enjoy that much more than my current job, it's just that what I would advocate is so far in the opposite direction of the UK foreign office and civil service's ethos (non-judgmental promotion of UK interest and people without imposing change on other countries) that I wouldn't get the opportunity. The British sitcom "Yes Minister" captures perfectly how the UK establishment works, it's from the 80s but still very relevant. It works to ensure the continued existence of the establishment, not the general population.
AI Machine Transcription - Enjoy the Glitches!
Andrew: The sheer scale of, Hydrocarbon involvement in our modern industrial life is so incredibly difficult to untangle.
There's literally nothing more important than our energy because it ties into the availability of education and medicine and travel and communication. Right, without. some form of mass energy production. We're right back to the medieval ages.
Leafbox: Andrew, thanks so much for making time for me. I know you're a busy guy. Yeah, I really appreciate it. Actually, when I first met you, I was actually fascinated with your work because you're one of the few people I know who has jumped from the oil sector to a climate friendly energy sector, I call it, so I was very curious about your perspectives on both. Having, your wife told me that you lived in Baku and that alone, it is probably a book's worth of questions. Andrew, why don't we just start tell us who you are, where you are, what's the weather like in Fukuoka? And where are you from?
Andrew: Well, the most important thing the seasons in Japan seem to follow rules like the rest of Japan. So it's got the memo recently that it's not summer anymore, which is great because summers here are pretty brutal. And it's cloudy and rainy, which from someone from Scotland is nice and familiar.
Yeah, I guess be brief biography. I'm Scottish from the North of Scotland. This is usually the point where someone says, well, you don't sound Scottish, but that's because I was born down in England. But moved up Scott, two parents from very remote rural part of Scotland. And we moved up when I was about six.
So I went to the local university Aberdeen which at the time was the oil capital of Europe. So with a passion for engineering and a desire to Just have adventure really as a young guy wanting to see the world. Also oil is always historically been very well paid. Probably along the lines of, I don't know, market wise, your career options, lawyer, doctor, that sort of thing, which was never really my interest in an oil worker.
So anyway financial motivations, adventure motivations, just an interest in big, heavy engineering pushed me in that direction. I joined, graduated, I took a master's in offshore engineering graduated and joined Halliburton about six weeks before 9 11. So this was in the year of of Dick Cheney, of course then I eventually ended up working offshore.
For a company that worked on drilling rigs, doing directional surveys, so you would run drilling tools down the well and that was quite life changing, really very exciting. A lot of. Pressure. This is all gonna make me sound very old, but pre smartphone days. So you were a lot more on your own in those days.
I did that for four years. Then I ended up running operations in Lagos, Nigeria. Did that for three years, joined a Norwegian company, worked for them in Aberdeen, and then again, oil service. And ended up running their operations in Baku and Azerbaijan. Then COVID came along and like for a lot of people turned the world upside down.
So with the low oil price ended up being made redundant and Really struggled for about a year or so to find work and then it wasn't ideological either one way or another in terms of the energy transition, it's quite heavily marketed these days but I'm not overly convinced that it's as easy as politicians seem to say it is but I took a job for a company drilling offshore foundations.
And I was working on a nuclear power station, the cooling shafts for a nuclear power station. And then I simply got a job offer one day an online recruiter to come to Japan to work on offshore wind which has some, Close. It's basically the same things I was doing, except it was in nuclear.
So yeah, none of it's been a straight line or a plan, but just the opportunity came up. We really wanted to have another period abroad. So we took the move and then I find myself on a beach speaking to yourself after about a year or so.
Leafbox: So Andrew, going back to university time, exactly what did you study? Was this petroleum engineering? Or
Andrew: It was no, it was mechanical engineering. But being in it was Robert Gordon university in Aberdeen, but being in Aberdeen, it was very heavily oil influenced at the time. I was actually. obsessed with cars and motorbikes, anything with an engine. So I really wanted to do automotive, but I didn't have the grades to go to a lot of the bigger universities down South.
And I was 16 when I went to university and didn't really want to go too far. So I did mechanical. And then that led on to a degree in offshore engineering at the same university, which was completely oil focused.
Leafbox: And then Andrew, can you tell me a little bit about the makeup of, the demographics of when you entered the oil industry and especially in Scotland and what were these offshore platforms like, you have engineers with high degrees and then what about the workers themselves?
Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. So, your average rig is made up of a lot of different job functions. At the top or guess with the most responsibility. So you've got your company that own the rig. They're the drilling contractor and they have their personnel the guy that manages the rig, and then they have all different personnel, including all the deck crew and all the roughnecks raised about, but then you have the oil company that contracts them.
And they have someone offshore running it, but they have a lot of engineers. And then you have all these like service companies, which is what I've worked for that come in and do things. So you typically have on the oil company sides. You'd have someone with, degrees, you'd have like their graduate programs, you'd have young people coming offshore, their first time offshore, but they'd be quite high up relatively.
And then you would have your deck crew, mechanics, electricians, which typically weren't university educated. And the guys right at the very top who'd be like, Oh, I am like the rig manager generally, especially in the old days, wouldn't be university educated, but they would just have worked offshore for a very long time.
So that they'd be very knowledgeable and skilled in what we're doing. A lot of them took degrees as, technology increased. And it became, more important to have a degree, but especially in the old days, although I think at that level in that job, people wouldn't have had degrees, but you do have, it is a big mix between like I said, your deck crew and the people that are more like the, engineers, geologists, et cetera.
And I can't speak for every region, but you do find that you've got, so say the comparative salary or career prospects of a welder, or a mechanic or somewhere you've suddenly got someone who could earn, I don't know, in the U S but in the UK, maybe Twenty five twenty twenty five thousand pounds a year.
Maybe, like three years ago in their offshore making like 60, and it's I think it's the same thing in the U. S. you have people from very poor areas that can go offshore and just, quadruple more there their salaries and it's a, But there's a reason why they're, there's a reason why they're getting paid that is because it's a lot more difficult and dangerous when you're away from home and stuff. It's a strange old mix in a lot of ways.
Leafbox: And then can you describe for people just what the actual dangers are? Give people an image of what these platforms are like to be on them and how to build them and the complexity of these devices.
Andrew: There's so you have there's a lot of different forms, but basically you have a drilling rig. which can be like a semi submersible which floats or a jack up which legs are like sitting on the ground or you could even have a ship that comes like, it all depends on the the depth of the water depth usually.
So you'll have this vessel that drills a well and then eventually, so they'll drill a number of wells and then you'll have a platform which is fixed to the seabed usually and then that can that has like a. A wellhead that connects all the wells and then takes the hydrocarbons on board and then it might pump it to another bigger platform or it pumps it to some like somewhere where it's processed and then it's pumped on shore.
There's different. There's common dangers. Everything from there've been a number of helicopter incidents over the years. Generally, a lot of these rigs are so far away that you'll take a, you'll take a chopper backwards and forwards. And it's been well documented of things like gearbox failures and stuff.
You're probably one of the biggest, I don't have the HSC statistics in front of me, but one of the biggest injuries are probably slips, trips and falls. Because, your average drilling rig has maybe four or five levels to it, and you're up and down stairs all day with big boots on and a hard hat and glasses and stuff, and people tripping on themselves.
Obviously drilling, you've got well you've got a lot of overhead lifts, a lot of people get injured with the fingers getting caught between loads roughnecks, raced abouts on the drill floor when they're handling drilling pipe. I've met a lot of people over the years that have got one or more fingers missing, because it's very easy to get your finger nipped between two things are being lifted, especially when people put their hands on to try and direct them.
And then obviously the pressure of the hydrocarbons look at deep water horizon, for example the oil and the gas, It's funny listening to your podcast with Jed about oil being sentient that the pressure that the oil is under.
So when you tap into, obviously it wants to go, it wants to go up and out. And then that could literally rip a rig apart if it's not if it's not controlled. And then obviously you've got the ignition risk, which, you've got Piper Alpha in the UK and you've got, like I say, Deepwater Horizon, there's been a number of rig explosions and then going back to what I said about platforms.
So Piper Alpha was a platform and that was processing gas. So you have 100 and 170, 200 odd people working and living. on a structure offshore where there are like an enormous amount of gas that's being pumped. extracted and pumped like underneath their feet and it only takes, one ignition source and then you're on top of a fireball.
And I remember being offshore when they're flaring, which is a process whereby they burn off excess gas and just being stunned by the ferocity of the noise, nevermind the heat of the, that it's just like a primal hour, you, you can stand a couple of hundred. Yards away from it and you can feel it on your face, it's just, it's very different.
I've been offshore on a wind turbine installation vessel, which has the same offshore industrial risks in terms of lifted injuries, slips, trips, and falls and suspended loads. But you don't have that. You don't have that like potential that the entire thing can blow up underneath your feet.
Leafbox: So with this danger and this kind of. wild beast underneath you. How did the men and women respond? You had in your email, a little bit of this kind of cowboy culture. I'm curious what the culture of these workers are like, and maybe in Scotland and what you've seen around the world. If these people aren't usually they're more working class or what's the relationship with them and the engineers and yeah, tell me about that.
Andrew: It's it's a very, it's a very masculine environment. That's not to say that there aren't women offshore in the industry. There, there absolutely are. And there, there are more and more these days especially in certain countries, like in Scandinavia, for instance But it's a very, especially when you get down to the deck crew, it's a very, the recruits are very masculine, very like macho environment.
It's quite a tough environment. It's a very hard working environment. The it's not that people I wouldn't say a matter of fact to say the opposite in terms of people having a cavalier attitude to safety. There have been a number of incidents over the years in the industry and each incident spurred along quite a lot of improvements in health and safety.
So I'd say probably in terms of. Industry, it's probably one of the safest industries, well, it's probably one of the industries with the best safety attitude. I'm sure maybe nuclear is probably up there as well, but people are aware offshore of the risks. There's a huge QHSE industry.
There's a, most companies have some form of a HSE system, which allows anyone from someone who works for the camp boss, like someone who changes the sheets, the cleaners, the cooks to like the driller can stop operations if they think that something is dangerous and there can't be any comeback, and stopping operations offshore is a big deal.
Because the average. Rigorate is, it fluctuates, but the average is, I don't know, a few hundred thousand, I don't know what it is at the moment, but let's say up to maybe a half a million more for the biggest rates, biggest rigs per day. That's what, 20, 000 an hour. So if you see something that's dangerous and you stop it for a couple of hours that's a lot of money.
So it takes a lot of nerve to do that, but the industry has been pretty good. They have these systems called stop cards. Like I say, Different companies have different names for it, but it gives the ability to It gives you authority for someone not to be forced into doing something that they think is dangerous.
So overall, I actually think the health and safety culture is quite good. But if you look at Deepwater Horizon, that was a classic example of even at the corporate level, people being frightened to say no and frightened to halt operations. So that does still persist due to the sheer amount of money involved.
Leafbox: And then tell me about in your email, you had a quote line about, these workers spending their money, maybe not as wisely. I'm curious to describe and understand the cowboy. I have this image, my father worked for Exxon for a long time.
And his biggest problem was piracy. They had so much issues with piracy, but this was in the Caribbean. So it's just constantly people stealing oil from them. So maybe yeah, tell me how it is now after I guess 2000s, how it's changed. You're describing this very safe sounding MBA driven culture, but I have trouble.
Yeah. Tell me what it's like around the world.
Andrew: So that's the sort of the day to day attitude offshore, which is pushed very heavily by the oil companies. It's a lot of recording. They record lost time statistics which also not to get sidetracked, but that has a slightly negative effect as well in terms of if a rig has, say.
That they'll, quite often rigs will have a big display when you arrive and it says this amount of days from the last accident and if they go like a year without any LTIs, everyone on the rig could get like an iPad or some sort of bonus or something and it's a big deal not to have incidents that cause a loss of time and that, by that if someone has to go to hospital, someone has to leave the rig, but that also does encourage it can encourage hiding of things, someone maybe, they've smashed their finger, but can they just maybe report it, but maybe just go on like light duties or something rather than go to the hospital before, before their shift change sort of thing which does happen and it's not healthy.
But anyway, to get back to your point I think it comes from, as I say it's, a way for someone who would have no other avenue to earn the amount of money that they would get offshore by taking on the additional risk and being away from home. So say an electrician, your average construction electrician wages are probably pretty good these days, but if you take someone working in, some rural place in, in the States who is like a car mechanic or something, and then they go offshore And they're multiplying their salary, but they're multiplying their salary, perhaps coming from an environment where no one's ever had that type of money.
They're coming home with maybe try to think of some people I've known, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year when their salary may have been I don't know, sub six figures, but they don't come from an environment where that sort of money is common. So you then have a situation whereby they are the one person in their family or town or their local bar.
who has loads of money, who's been away from home for four weeks, but he doesn't have the most stable relationship precisely because they're not at home, but yet they've got loads of money and loads of time. You can see how that can encourage perhaps resentment. Or just a feeling of alienation from that community.
That sort of person, say they have a lot more money than their friends, maybe they want to buy them drinks, but then do they want to have to do that all the time? I've known people that have been divorced multiple times, that have bought boats and all sorts of things that they never use and they end up with, paying for There are families that they never see, the families that get remarried, the kids that they never see.
I've worked with directional drillers that I've got a wife in one country, an ex wife in another country, kids that don't like them, and they just pay for all these families. They get onshore and then they spend the next couple of weeks with some, teenage prostitute blowing all the money on that drink for the rest of the month and then they're back offshore.
the shakes and then they decompress over the month and then the cycle repeats itself. So in the one sense, it's a fantastic opportunity for social mobility, but it also can leave a lot of chaos behind it. And I'm certainly not at all. And having come from a work class background myself, I'm not certainly saying that.
It shouldn't be there. I think it's a positive thing and it's up to these people what they want to do with their money. I'm just saying it's an interest in social observance that it's, you don't get that many working class people that can leave school and have a manual trade and can go and be a lawyer or a doctor or a CEO but you are all of a sudden getting these people in situations who are making the same amount of money, but without the family structure.
Or the societal structure that can prepare them for that.
Leafbox: Jumping to the next topic, I'm curious, you first mentioned Dick Cheney, what was your relationship, you're in Scotland, and how does that fiddle in with the Middle East? oil wars and just the general kind of, I feel like when my father worked in oil, there wasn't that much of a hostility in the general environment.
It was just people drove cars and you worked in the oil industry and it wasn't that. So in post 2000, I would say things change both from the climate perspective and then from the kind of American imperialist association with oil.
Andrew: It's changed massively in terms of hostility. Just, it's just like night and day. So when I graduated, I remember being at school in the early nineties and there was, I don't think it was climate, no, no global warming. It was called then. So there was discussion of it.
But the greenhouse the ozone layer was the big deal. And there was environmentalism, Greenpeace was quite big at that time. But. The, there was no stigma like whatsoever into going into the oil industry. And you could see that in terms of the courses at the time they were called there was like drilling engineering courses, offshore engineering courses petroleum engineering.
You go back to the same universities now and it's like energy transition. I think you'll struggle to find that many courses that have got the words petroleum or drilling in it. And also it was very easy to get a job in those days in the industry. The, yeah the Gulf War, so the second Gulf War at the time working for Halliburton, I was very conscious of, it was very interesting to me how the company was structured.
So you had Halliburton Energy Services and you had KBR, Kellogg, Brennan, Root, and they were the company that won the uncontested contract to rebuild in Iraq. But the way the company was structured. Was that they were that they were split up basically. So if one of them had gone down the toilet for any of these issues, they were separated.
I was very happy to join Haliburton. It was a big career wise. I thought it was very good. I look back now, it's funny how I look back, like inside, I look back on that whole Iraq war with absolute horror now, but I had grown up with Free internet with, what at the time were considered authoritative news sources with the BBC and British newspapers.
It might sound naive, but you believe that people are doing the right thing. And I just thought at the time that, that, we were going into Iraq because it was a very bad person there. And I look back now, with I look at Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and all the things that have happened with absolute horror.
But at the time it just seemed quite straightforward. My, my view on the oil industry hasn't changed in terms of, I, I believe in an energy mix. I think there's a lot of irresponsibility talked about these days in terms of the energy transition. I do think there should be an energy mix.
I don't think it should be any one source of energy. But I feel like we're in the same position that we're in before except instead of it being everyone's desperate to make money out of oil. I think everyone's desperate to make money out of renewables these days.
Leafbox: Well, before we jump to that point, I want to I think that's a big topic we'll go to, but tell me about your jump to Nigeria.
You're still naive then, or eager help, Nigerian oil industry or what you get assigned to Nigeria. What's that like?
Andrew: Well, so I so that four years of us, so the three years I worked for that company originally was on it was on an ad hoc basis. So basically I would be at home. I'd get a phone call.
And I could, I had to live within 45 minutes of the airport but I usually got at least a day. Sometimes it wasn't, it will, it was literally a day. Sometimes it was like a week, but I would get a call and then I could go anywhere in a region was Europe, Africa, Caspian. So I could go anywhere.
Most of it was in West Africa. So I would go and work offshore in the Congo. Not the DRC, but the Republic of Congo Gabon, Nigeria, but all over Europe and occasionally like the Far East. So I had a lot of experience of Africa at that point. My very first, one thing I did want to, I was thinking the other day, one thing I did want to mention was when I first went, in terms of naivety, when I first time I ever went to Africa was in the Congo.
And I'd grown up in the eighties where we had Live Aid was basically anyone's kind of opinion of Africa. And I remember at school we used to be forced to sing Do They Know It's Christmas, like every Christmas. So that was everyone's opinion of Africa was like just basically starving children. And I arrived in the Congo.
They've got quite a decent airport now in Point Noir, but when I arrived it was literally a concrete shed with arrivals on one side and departures on the other and just like sand on the ground. And I can't remember coming out of that totally by myself just with my Nokia phone with the local contacts phone number and all these little kids appeared like Tugging it, tugging at my trousers asking for money and I was absolutely horrified I'd never seen like poverty like that and I felt horrible that I couldn't help them.
But it's funny how You not that I don't care about children, but you harden yourself to what the reality of life is like in places like that. And I did that for three years. I was in Angola rotating for a year. In Cabinda, which is a chevron camp. And then I I got the job in Nigeria.
And actually my father passed away just before I got that job. So I was a bit rudderless at that point. I really enjoyed it got to me in the end, I was there for three years and I started to get very frustrated when I was at home, that's when I thought I need to make a change.
But there's a sort of happy level of chaos, I found. It's. in Nigeria, where things are, they don't work in the sense that they would do in, in, in what you'd call, developed countries. You can't rely on things to work. You can't really rely on people in a certain sense, but there's a sort of happy, it's difficult to explain.
Like it's just, It's a very chaotic place, a very noisy, chaotic place. But once you accept that it's quite a good laugh actually. I have some quite happy memories from working there.
Leafbox: So Andrew, when you enter in these places you first described your kind of exposure to Congo, but how do you conceptualize the interaction between the Western oil companies and I guess the local developing country?
Do you think about that? Or are all the workers local? Or is everyone imported from all over the world? And
Andrew: There's a big move towards localization in pretty much any location I've been which is, which has changed over the years. So when I first started working say in Africa, as an example.
Pretty much all of the deck crew, all of the roughnecks were all Africans or locals from whichever ever country you're in. But once you got to the upper levels, like the Western oil companies, you would have, so you'd have like drill engineers, which weren't. You might describe them as like project managers of the drilling operations.
So there you would have kind of a mix of locals and expats, but you pretty much always find once you went above that to like drilling managers. You'd find all what they call company men, which are the company's representative offshore, pretty much always expats. That has changed over the years, which I think is a very positive thing.
A lot of countries, Azerbaijan's like this, a lot of countries in Africa, Nigeria is like this. They put within the contracts, like a local content. So for a company to win the license and which is then cascaded down to the subcontractors, you have to have a percentage of local employees and you have to have a system for replacing your senior people, training up locals and replacing them over time, which I think is very positive because after all, it's there.
Oil is their resources. There are in certain locations with certain companies, a pretty bad history. Shell Nigeria, for example. You can your listeners can look all this up, but there have been, various controversies over the years on the whole, I think on the whole, I think.
that it's a positive for these countries because I look at it in terms of a capitalist sort of capitalist approach that, you know and it's almost like the thing that I was saying where you have like someone who comes from a family or a class where they are not exposed to money and all of a sudden they have a huge amount of money where you could say the same thing with some tiny country where by a that they've had a level of civilization and a level of like income over the years and all of a sudden someone discovers oil and there's no way you can reasonably expect a society to just, you can't take somewhere that goes from like tribal pre industrial revolution conditions and make it New York City overnight.
It's just, it's not going to happen. And just expanding that slightly, I was in Papua New Guinea in the eastern part And up in the highlands on a well site a while ago. And that was fascinating because Papua New Guinea is still, it's a country, but it's still very tribal. So once you leave Port Moresby you're really, it's not like you're going to call the police if someone tries to assault you or call an ambulance or something.
It's very much like I say, pre industrial revolution, tribal. societies, but they're sitting on billions of dollars of gas. So you get these little pockets of on the shore drilling rigs. And they're just pumping millions and billions of dollars worth of gas out from under your feet, but they pay the locals.
And the site that I was on right at the top of the hill overlooking it was a big mansion owned by the who, as soon as he started drilling, he would get 10 million. And then, as I was informed, would probably disappear down to Australia and, enrich the local casinos and stuff. But, who is to say that is, would it be great if he built a hospital and built a school and improved the lives of everyone around him?
Oh, of course it would. But who's to say morally that we Chevron should be, I understand the point that maybe Chevron should be building these things, but who is to say that the condition should be attached to what that chief spends his money on. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I I think I place a lot of responsibility on hydrocarbons are located.
I do think there have been a lot of very negative practices by By all companies over the years, and they absolutely have a duty to maintain the environment. But I think it's a bit hypocritical. I see a lot of rich Western countries, especially now saying to a lot of poorer, undeveloped countries that they shouldn't be drilling or they shouldn't be, should be using the money differently.
And I think, well, it's their resource. I look at it more from a capitalist point of view, rather than, like I said in my email, I'm quite anti interventionist in that sense.
So historically I'm going to, this continues now, but there have been issues with literally, so they put these big pipelines through people's villages and the way that a lot of these things are organized is like I said, about Papua New Guinea they'll contact, the tribal chief and we'll pay a rent or some sort of fee to, to put these big pipelines through, through these small places.
But there are some times when, I haven't, I, the right tribal chief or they've not paid enough or there's some sort of dispute and you will get villagers literally drilling into these oil pipelines with drills and buckets to steal the oil. And of course someone's doing it and they're smoking or there's some sort of ignition source and the whole thing erupts and, the village is burnt and it's a horrible, tragedy but it's just it's a funny, again, it goes back to the theory of what I was saying, the juxtaposition of that very valuable resource with a very, with a civilization, with a community, probably better way of putting it, who has never had access to that amount of money.
So you're literally pumping these, this thing through their village that is worth more money than they'll ever see in their lifetime. And obviously the temptation to try to take some of that. is there, almost like understandably, but then again it quite often results in a lot of death and destruction.
So that's yeah, it's just it's part of the whole industry in a lot of ways. And other industries, when you look at things like lithium mining and diamonds and stuff, you have a very high value resource That has been, by pure chance, located in a very poor part of the world and it results in these tragedies sometimes.
Leafbox: I was going to ask you about the processing of oil. So when export the raw crude. Mostly the oils and process somewhere else. You were, you're taking the oil from Nigeria. Like Venezuela, they have to ship it all to Houston or whatnot to get turned into different solvents and gasoline. And,
Andrew: This is probably when I'll need some fact checking, but my recollection of the time in Nigeria was that they weren't processing the oil on shore.
I stand corrected if that's wrong, but my understanding was that they weren't, or at least there wasn't very many refineries, so it was basically all, like you said, extracted and then sent abroad. To be refined. That's certainly the situation in in Papua New Guinea. A lot of it is turned an LPG there and then shipped abroad.
I guess I would guess, I would assume that would be the situation in a lot of West African countries for a lot of reasons, you have an established. Supply chain, you have established skill set in other places, then it comes down to cost and then you have the security of, you can imagine the enormous amount of investment you would need in a refinery.
And would you rather do that in a place that's had a history of civil war, or would you take the cost to ship it abroad and do it somewhere else,
Leafbox: no, it's understandable. I think that's important for listeners to understand that. The refinery in Louisiana or whatnot, or, it's so massive, it's billions of dollars and it's such a dangerous place to work also. Right. Those are just like literally atomic bomb sized potential energy.
Andrew: The one thing that, there's always been, say in Scotland, there's been a little bit of resentment towards, Aberdeen and they're all like rich up there from other places in Scotland, but I think that there is, people are aware of Deepwater Horizon and Piper Alpha, et cetera, but I do think that there has been an underappreciation of the, just the Crazy risks that are involved when you're working offshore and handling hydrocarbons.
Like I said, you take a helicopter to work with all the risks that I had in, in tails, and then you spend a month or so working on top of something that is effectively, a bomb if if things aren't handled properly. And you're, how far away are you from like emergency services?
There are supply vessels and stuff, but. It's very much an environment where you have to just be very careful and very aware of dangers, which I think the industry now has got very good at. But yeah, the wages are high, but they're high for a reason. It's not it's not an easy, it's not an easy job in terms of that.
And like I alluded to before, in terms of family stability, working away and coming back is not really conducive quite often to, to a healthy home life.
Leafbox: Going back to Angola for a second I read an account of the Chinese are very heavily in Luanda and Angola, and they had the terrible civil war.
But one of the things that really stood out to me is that all the Chinese use Chinese labor. So their oil boats are all Chinese workers and they often use ex felons, which I thought was interesting. But there's, I guess they, all these ex felons in Angola, I don't know if you saw this, I wanted to confirm it, but there's a lot of half Chinese, half Angolan children now because all the Chinese roughnecks.
They're all men. So there's a booming Angolan prostitution and it just was so wild. Angola think Luanda is the most expensive city in the world. But then the most violent too, so yeah, just what's your general impression
Andrew: I I've been in Luanda in total, probably just a couple of days.
Most of my time was spent in a, so Chevron Texco have this place called Cabinda. Which is actually, technically speaking, if you look at the map, it's not actually connected to Angola, you've got Angola, then you've got a little gap, and then you've got Cabinda, which is the little gap is part of the DRC, I think but Cabinda is where all the onshore processing of the oil is.
It's part of Angola and it's like a prisoner of war camp and you go up there and you can't leave pretty much until you've finished your work. But my impression of Lulanda wasn't great at all. I remember driving into it and there's these massive shanty towns on the edge of the city with just like literal rubbish tipped down the side of these hills.
And then you get into the city and it's just a. massive continual traffic jam with Porsche Cayennes and Range Rovers and G Wagons. And it just felt in the way that I was describing Lagos and even Port Harcourt, which has a pretty bad reputation as a sort of, chaotic, but fun sort of chaos.
I felt and this is just my personal impression, I felt Lwanda was chaos, but dangerous chaos. Not you wouldn't stay in a staff house there and you wouldn't go out for a drink anyway. You wouldn't even really go out for lunch much. You just stayed in. It looked to me like as if you'd taken a European city, which I guess it, that's how it was built.
And then you just start maintaining it from like 1960s onwards, but then you'd add it in a civil war and I appreciate the civil war was like a proxy civil war and then just didn't repair any infrastructure and just peppered the whole place with like bullet holes.
It wasn't, it was not particularly, it's not a place that I would recommend to be quite honest with you. In terms of the Middle East, the comparison with the Middle East I've not really worked that much in the Middle East, to be quite honest with you. I guess my closest is the Caspian, which is more Central Asia, but that was way more structured.
Yes, there's massive amounts of corruption, massive amounts of poverty. But yeah, absolutely more structured and less chaotic in that sense.
Leafbox: Andrew, what's the relationship in Nigeria, there's famous activists who, like the Shell, they polluted so heavily, but then I guess the military tribunals would erase or disappear people.
Maybe this is before you worked there, but what, as, what was the relationship of the company men with the government? Was there open kind of corruption or? What was your general vibe of is the manager's job and kind of getting these contracts. Talk to me about that. Like Deanna, how did the, you know, Exxon versus Armco or whatever it is, whoever's ever getting these contracts, there's obviously backdoor dealings.
Andrew: Yeah, in terms of, actual drilling licenses I was never near or even remotely near the people that will be making those sort of decisions. And I'm certainly not going to allege corruption at that level. And I don't have any evidence, but what I would say, and again, all of this is just my personal opinion.
It's, I'm not disparaging any one particular place in general, but the level of corruption. that I would see was so endemic that I just came to feel it was cultural which again, it's not really don't want to make that sound like it's a slight, to me it was an understanding of I really feel, and just briefly going back to the whole Bob Geldof Live Aid thing, I really feel like in the West we've made a mistake over the years in trying to impose our way of looking at the world on other cultures.
And what I would see in most West African countries was it was just an accepted way Of living, accepted way of dealing. So you would go to the airport. We used to have these boxes that would have electronic equipment in them. And we had to hand carry them cause they were quite fragile.
And then you would go to the check in desk and they would be like okay, well we have to get some stairs to lift this into the plane. So that's an extra 50. I'm not sure you actually own this equipment. It's got another company written on it. You give me a hundred dollars.
Sometimes it's not quite said, you'll just get so much hassle and you'd see other, you'd see some people there that would freak out in case thinking that they were gonna, arrested or something. They just open their wallet and hand over loads of money. The, but it's not it's not like some under the table nefarious plot it's just like the checking guy is getting paid next to nothing He sees someone who's obviously got all my money and he has How can I get that money off him and it's at every single level my I mean I suppose I would say I was wise to it, but even I would make naive mistakes.
I remember on a leaving day when I left Nigeria I had this driver who I'd still consider a friend. I messaged him on Facebook sometimes, and he was a really nice young guy who would go out of his, literally out of his way to help me. And I made the silly mistake of handing in my bank card on my like, leaving due.
I'd had a little bit to drink and I just thought, surely it'll be fine. And of course I get back to the UK, I check my statement and there's a couple of hundred dollars missing or a hundred pounds missing. At the time I was like, that must be a bank error, surely not. But I look back in it now and I just think, again, this isn't, this honestly isn't even a criticism, it's just the culture is to try and hustle.
And if you, if it doesn't work, well, I tried. It's just, it's endemic in that sense. I don't doubt that there most likely have been over the years some very shady practices on the behalf of Western oil companies and Western governments. You only have to look at the history of, BP and the UK government and Americans in Iran and coups to get oil and all these sorts of things.
But I'm just talking about like the corruption that I've seen, it seemed, Cultural in that sense. It's just everywhere. The one thing that I would say is that companies I've worked for within the contracts is very heavy anti corruption. So the FCPA, if I'm remembering that right, in the US. The anti corruption laws are very strong to the point where if a company official from a country, say like Scotland, is a manager and he signs off on a bribery expense, he can actually, if I'm right in recalling this, he can end up going to jail himself for that.
So a hundred percent, I'm sure it's happening by at the same time legally, there are some very strict laws against it.
Leafbox: When they just outsource to local sub providers, that's what I would imagine they do to get around that.
Andrew: I think it's a case of well, just don't tell me sort of thing.
Leafbox: Yeah.
Andrew: I'm pretty sure that, that's why. Well,
Leafbox: I think people don't understand if you haven't been to these countries, it's just it's just not Norway. It's not. Yeah. It's a very different. Yeah.
Andrew: And. I, sorry to interrupt you, but I've done quite a bit of work in Norway and I have found that some countries and some cultures seem to have a difficulty accepting that the world isn't the way that they are.
And I think that that, not to, not to boast or to my trumpet here, but I think that one thing that I've learned over the years is that some places they just are the way they are. And it's, of course you don't want to encourage. Corruption, you don't want to encourage mistreatment, but I don't believe it's your right.
Like I'm like, I live in Japan now and some things, a lot of things about Japan I absolutely love, but there are also some things about Japan that just don't seem right to me. But it's not my place to come in and say, right, you're doing this wrong. You should be doing this the other way. It just isn't, it's not my country.
And I felt the same way in Africa. There's loads of things about Nigeria that I was like, this is absolute madness. But it's their madness, it's not my madness, and I'm a guest in their country.
Leafbox: What do you think the difference, in your email to me, you wrote about the colonial being British, how's that relationship been for you?
You've, non interventionist now, but you wrote about, your forefathers or previous generations having quote, good intentions. Maybe tell me about that.
Andrew: I think that I know that there's a lot in the UK as with America now that's quite, there's a lot of attempt to be revisionist within history and question history, which I'm a big fan of people questioning history.
I just think once again, that we are tending to look at things from a very Western point of view without taking into account like global history. I know believe, through my experience of traveling, I now think, well, exactly like what I just said, I don't think it's our place to change countries to mold them in our ways, but I do have a more charitable view of a lot of our maybe not every one of them, certainly not every country's colonial adventures, but I do think that some of them were more motivated by, as I said, a Christian desire to end certain barbaric practices.
If you look at, the I forget what the practice is called, but the practice of people burning their their wives on the husband's funeral pyre in India and the whole slavery, which, yes, Britain was a part of but it's quite clear that, the British Navy was very important, effective in, in, in ending the global slave trade.
So I'm very proud of where I come from and I'm proud of my ancestors. I don't deny that They were put that they, there weren't some, as I said, some negative aspects and atrocities, but I just think that again, when it comes to, and I think about this more because I have kids now.
So I think about how I want them to feel about the country going forward. This is part of, traveling. You see so many countries where people are so proud of their country. Nigerians were some of the most proud people I think I've ever met, and it's the same in Japan. And I worry the direction our country's going, both the UK and the US, when we were raising a generation of children who are being taught to be embarrassed by where they come from.
Leafbox: Going back to oil for a second, Andrew, the colonial legacy is impossible to digest in a short interview, but do you have, what's the general like Pemex or the Venezuelan oil companies or the Russian oil companies? What's your general impression of nationalized oil companies versus the private?
Andrew: Yeah. I so I guess my biggest experience is in Azerbaijan, there's a company called Soka which is the national oil company. And of course all these national oil companies, a lot of them have shares in international like private oil companies.
So it's not always a clear divide of either one or the other, but I guess I, as someone who really. believes in capitalism. I think that in terms of efficiency and certainly in terms of safety, in terms of environmental compliance, I think that the private oil companies are much more answerable to activism, to just a sense of corporate responsibility than private oil companies.
And if you're in somewhere like Russia, like you say, Venezuela and the national oil companies is polluting the water. Well, What are you going to do about compared to a private oil company who has, a much more, it has shareholders and I guess more of a global footprint. But I also come back to the point, as I was saying about localization that these resources are the country's resources and I think it's quite right that companies pay.
I wouldn't say prohibitive amounts of tax, but I think it's quite right that companies pay a lot of money in tax when they extract the hydrocarbons, and they have local content. I guess the ideal for me is private, but with a level of public ownership. But not actually running the operations because I think as soon as you take away, as soon as you take away that meritocracy, you end up with health and safety risks, you end up with just waste, and when it comes to something like with the large amounts of money involved That just ends up taking money away from the actual people.
I don't think it's, I don't think it's generally a great idea, but I think a sort of public, a bit like you see a lot here in Japan actually, a public private mix, if done properly, is probably the way to go for a lot of utilities.
Leafbox: Great. So Andrew, maybe it's time to jump to the oil and energy diverse mix.
Tell me about what brings you to Japan. First, you work on nuclear and now wind.
Andrew: Yeah. For me, I can't claim any sort of high minded high minded drive to change from one industry to the other. It was purely, I had a mortgage and a new baby and I desperately needed a job. So that was how I made that jump.
The one thing I have experienced over the years, it's certainly the place I've worked. It's very, Unless you're in a region that has like a national oil company, it's even then I guess depends who you are. It's very meritocratic, but it's quite cutthroat. So oil companies, service companies, as soon as oil price drops, it's very cyclical.
People just get made redundant. People, I saw people at Halliburton had been there for literally 40, 50 years being made redundant just because the share price dropped a few points. I've been made redundant twice myself. And yeah, it's just horrible. And there's nothing you can do about it because it's an economic decision.
It's nothing to do with your performance. And that happens to, it's probably very few people on the street that hasn't happened to It's the downside of the high salary really. So coming into wind it was really an opportunity to, as I say, we wanted to live abroad again for a little while.
And opportunities to live in Japan don't come by very often. And it's interesting. It's interesting. It's very different. It's interesting from an engineering point of view. It's a lot of heavy lifts. And Japan, I think Japan has a good attitude towards offshore wind, because everything else, Japan has a long term vision.
It has a vision of a percentage mix of nuclear fossil fuels, renewables, whereas I feel like I'm fairly against it in my home country, in the UK, because we don't have a long term plan. We've had four prime ministers in the last two years. One of them wanted to build eight nuclear power stations, the next one to start fracking.
And then the one now wants to quadruple our offshore wind capacity in eight years, which is impossible. It's quite nonsensical. It's quite short term thinking. I'm not anti wind, I'm not pro oil, I'm not anti or pro any, anything. What I'm pro is a science based, long term, non subsidy, non corruption based market solution.
Obviously you've got environmental aspect of climate change, et cetera, which needs to be taken into account. But I found, I find a lot of the attitude towards renewables and towards the energy mix quite histrionic and not really based on facts.
Leafbox: Do you ever think about, geopolitics as an engineer in terms of, where these pressures are coming from.
Europe particularly seems so against oil and hydrocarbons, but if you do any scientific research, you just, there's the capacity of hydrocarbons to produce energy is just unparalleled in terms of the input to output. And wind is just not a realistic option.
Andrew: I think that, I think there's a general I would say it's a mistake, but I think it's done on purpose, but there's a general attitude that seems to be portrayed in the media that you can have one company or one industry is virtuous and everything they do is virtuous and there are no negative connotations or motivations behind what they're doing.
And then the other is just all negative. So right now, it seems like oil is completely negative and then offshore wind is completely positive. You look at the motivations behind companies putting in offshore wind turbines or the service companies exactly the same as motivations behind all companies.
Neither one is doing them. For anything other than to make money. And I think it's simplistic and a little bit silly to think that the boss of an oil company is some sort of J. R. Ewing, person that likes to run over puppies on the way home and the boss of an electricity company or a turbine installation company or whatever.
is some sort of, sandal wearing saint that doesn't care about money. Everyone in pretty much, I would say any corporation, that statistic about men are CEOs, they're psychopaths. All they care about is money. And I think there are a lot of like there's a lot of talk about subsidies.
You just touched on it, I think. And people talk about subsidies and oil when they're talking about subsidies and oil, what they're talking about is the The fact that when you drill an oil well, which can be anything between, I don't know, 30 and like upwards of 100 million, you basically get to claim that back off the tax.
Now the tax in the UK is, it was about 75 percent on the oil that they extract and profit from the oil they extract. But if you have that say 100 million cost, how many companies can drill three or four wells at 100 That you're going to get anything out of that. Very few companies can afford to take that risk.
I don't think it's a bit rich to call that a subsidy when you've got the whole CFD process for offshore wind, which effectively guarantees the strike price of electricity. So you imagine if you had that for oil, you would have, You would have countries buying oil off the oil companies when the price dropped, and they don't have that, they don't have that, that, that mechanism, but you simply wouldn't get offshore winds without a decent strike price, which you've seen recently in the auctions when no one bid on the licenses in the UK, and I think it was the US as well.
Leafbox: So in essence you prefer just like a free market, totally. Not a totally free market, but in the sense that a clear transparent market. So if that really incentivized the right incentives, like you're saying in Japan, they have that mix of nuclear and hydrocarbon and wind and solar. And in Japan, I always feel like they're just burning trash.
That's their real power generation.
Andrew: It's funny that it's such a funny place in so many ways, but you've got this island, which has, a lot of geothermal resources. But in terms of mineral resources, it's not in a great position yet. It manages to be so incredibly self sufficient in terms of industry, in terms of fuel price.
Like they, they said to me when I arrived here, Oh God, it's so expensive electricity. It's like about 60 to, to a month for the electricity in your house. And it's a four bed house with five air cons on 24 seven. I'm like, geez, you just see the price UK. You'd be like, 10 times almost. So they managed to make it work, but like everything else here, like I said, it's a long term, long thought process.
And Obviously, I guess we haven't really talked about it, and I'm not, I don't feel qualified even to talk about it at all, to be honest with you, but in terms of climate change, I am very much meritocratic and capitalist in that sense that I think the market will identify the most efficient.
way of providing energy, but I completely accept that there needs to be a level of environmental regulation because going back to what I said, CEOs, I think of any company would do anything if it made them money. And I've seen, I saw this in Azerbaijan. You go out, you're back, he's an absolutely beautiful city, but if you look back through its history of being part of the Soviet Union, the level of just pollution was unreal and it still suffers from a lot of that, especially out with the main city. So I 100 percent agree with environmental regulations. I think that, I think there's a lot of politics behind climate change. I'm quite skeptical of international NGO organizations, especially with the last few years that we've had.
But I think that the yeah, I think that Japan's got it right. I think we need a mix and we need to not. Pretend like we are doing in the UK at the moment that for instance, the electricity price in the UK is doubled since 2019. And it hasn't here in Japan, and there, there tends to be a thought of, well, we just need to do all this because climate change is going to happen.
It doesn't matter that, that people are suffering now, I don't think, I think people tend to. tend to maybe forget the, it's like the, the just stop oil extinction rebellion types. It's the world we have is impossible to have without oil. Sure. You can reduce it. It's going to run out eventually one day anyway.
So reducing it is not a bad thing, but to pretend that you can just press stop and then you can put in a wind turbine is nonsensical. And the politicians know it's nonsensical as well.
Leafbox: Yeah. Right. That's why I was alluding to the. And of the psychological operations, often there's, conspiracies that Russia, for instance, is funding a lot of those extinction rebellion projects, right?
To get, there's that theory or that the U. S. themselves are pushing climate change propaganda in Europe to strengthen the U. S. Fracking and natural gas markets.
Andrew: Well, I was actually, I was listening to one of your podcasts the other day and I think it was Charles, but apologies if it wasn't, but the comment was about the activities I think of Extinction Rebellion and the people saying that They, the best way for them to do their activities is out in the open.
So the government can't, the government can't arrest them or can't fight them. But I've long thought for a while, it's pretty obvious where, what you're allowed to say and what you're not allowed to say. There's that famous quote about, your real enemy is the one that you're not allowed to to criticize in public.
And when you look at The founders of Just Stop Oil, and like you say, Extinction Rebellion, quite often you can find in the UK anyway, there's government grants funneled into these organizations, or even on the local level, like council grants funneled into these organizations. There is no way that you could have an organization that was I don't know, you pick something like an organization that was pro pro racism or pro child abuse or something that could have a demonstration and shut down major streets in the center of London or New York, or an organization that was, pro, I don't know, pro nuclear weapons protesting and sit in the middle of the M6 motorway.
It just wouldn't happen. And we saw that with, again, not getting into the rights and wrongs of it, but we had riots in the UK this year. And the governments were arresting and putting people in jail within a week of the riots. So the government can absolutely stop things when they want to, which makes me think that there is, wherever it's coming from, I have absolutely no idea.
I wouldn't even begin to guess, but I don't believe that these protests are not in some way sanctioned by both of our governments.
Leafbox: Well, that's why I was bringing up the case of your experience in Japan or Baku or even Nigeria. There's just contrast, right? Like you don't see, in Japan, there's a lot of anti nuclear, but you never hear of like the extinction rebellion type people don't seem to exist there.
Or, and can you, in China, obviously it's a totalitarian place.
Andrew: Yeah.
Leafbox: Yeah. It's very complicated. So going back in, you said when you're traveling around and you're working for these different companies, what's your experience as an expat with government agencies like the British embassy and, or the U S embassy, if you're working with a U S firm or other European companies.
EU NGOs or whatnot?
Andrew: So I guess probably, working offshore in the early parts of my career, I hadn't had to look up with anyone from that world. I guess it first came into my arena when I was operations manager in Baku in Azerbaijan. So that was a Norwegian company. So quite often these places, obviously the embassy will, take great delight in companies from that, from whatever country that work in that place.
And I'll try and promote them. Norwegian embassy were really sound, actually very positive. And probably leads on to like Norway's attitude to Norwegian companies, which is very, pro, Norwegian, which I think as it should be contrast that to I'll never forget. A dinner, an oil company dinner whereby there was, I don't know his position, but he was someone who'd just arrived from the British embassy.
And I think it was fairly high up, but anyway, he asked me we were just chatting and I was explaining what I do, and I remember him saying to me, like, how do you cope with the embarrassment of when you go back home to the UK and you tell people what they do and everyone hates you for it. And it took me a moment to register what he was saying.
Now, I was just absolutely stunned. I was like, well, I don't go back. I said something along the lines of I don't go back to the little bubble in North London that you go back to, we come from completely different worlds. And then I just pointed out some of the things on the table and around them that were made out of oil, the makeup on my wife's face, The cups on the table itself is BlackBerry that he was ignoring me by that point on.
And he just shut down. He just he just, he literally just stopped talking to me and looked at his phone. And what struck me was not one uninformed or opinionated person. What struck me was this is like a representative of the British state. This is like my home country. And I found out after that, that the British embassy, around about that time, Nothing to do with my conversation, obviously, but globally, the British foreign office had a policy of they wouldn't promote any companies that were related to the oil and gas industry.
And I know friends that started their own company. I know a friend who was like, late 20s, took a risk, started his own company just spotted a gap in the market offshore, took that risk. A few years ago, he sold that company to an international oil, a bigger oil and gas service company and made a fortune.
He's created jobs like a real pioneer. He's been told at international trade shows that he's not allowed to have his company on the stands of the British embassy. Because it's related to oil and gas, which I find absolutely astounding given the amount of not just from a moral point of view, but given the amount of money that he's contributed to, to essentially paying their wages in the forms of tax, but also and I was kicking myself afterwards for not saying this to the guy I met from British embassy. How many weapons manufacturers does the foreign office promote in places like Saudi Arabia? When I forget which country it was, maybe we were basically building the weapons that the Saudis were dropping on, dropping in Yemen and then various places throughout the world, not to mention British government's involvement in political cues for the establishment of companies like BP in the first place.
The the hypocrisy was just mind blowing and I feel as I've gotten older and I'm quite interested in global politics and I speak from a very UK point of view because it's my country, it's my home. I feel As ever, the British state works against the British people, not for the British people, which is a contrast to some of the countries that we may look down our noses on a little bit more as not developed, where, and Japan is a great example of this, where Japan seems to do things for the benefit of Japanese people, which seems to be a controversial idea back home.
that a politician would do something for the benefit of the actual people in his country. But that to us is to, I think the establishment in Britain now is strange. It's almost like we've, we fall into this, as I would say, a colonial mindset of we are the world's police. Effectively, we need to, we need to spend more time and money changing the world than we need to do looking after things at home.
It's funny, though, because your description of that low level UK consular officer, they seem very disconnected from the actual real world, right? They live in these elite bubbles that are, he doesn't understand what Papua New Guinea's reality is but then is willing to make, intergovernmental suggestions and policy papers and Push ideas, right?
So those impacts.
Sorry. I think that's, you're absolutely spot on. And if you look at it in terms of UK politics and not just politics, but the actual civil service in general, you see this, maybe this goes back to, British society for a long time. Cause we have, class is obviously a big issue in the UK still.
I'm very much. So I'd say it's that. It's that combination of of you start saying like conspiracy theory when you talk about elites, but it is a higher echelon of society who only mix with themselves, you have a combination of, they're out of touch on that one respect, but they have massive amounts of confidence.
So because of the public schools so they're never going to learn. So it just repeats itself, and it just seems to get. get worse over time. I really think that's the direction that we're heading in.
Leafbox: Yeah, it's hard to, yeah the quality of the civil service seems questionable, especially, yeah, if you see like the Japanese civil service, they seem so highly trained and meritocratic and just realistic, right?
Andrew: It's absolutely, it's absolutely amazing to me, and it was mind blowing to me that from the bottom level, from a postman to a. train conductor to someone at the driving license office. They are there even as a foreigner who is making their life 10 times more difficult because you're trying to use google translate and you're not following all the rules.
Their absolute pride and responsibility and everything that they are doing, whether they secretly can't stand you or not, whether they're secretly, they're having a bad day or whatever, they absolutely will go out of their way to do their job as a matter of pride. I don't know how the Japanese do it.
I don't know. It's not something I would say, you can't just replicate Japanese society because they have these cultural reasons. And you wouldn't want to, they, they are Japanese, they are the way they are, but I find it absolutely fascinating. And it makes me, when I go home, I'm actually much less tolerant of things that, that we have in the UK, like trains not running on time.
And all of course, you can't expect your post to be really redelivered or within a reasonable time frame, or of course, The tax office won't answer the phone, and I go back home and I'm like, well, why?
Leafbox: Well, moving back to I guess oil and the climate change stuff, your future, I think you, you want to return to rural Scotland.
What do you imagine there? Or do you imagine returning to the oil sector or to, or is that just killed off in the UK now?
Andrew: It's generally, it's not completely killed off. There are still some rigs offshore. There's still an oil industry. It is artificially diminished by, by quite significant windfall tax and just a lack of government encouragement.
It's not a. It's always been an expensive place, but you have that curve of cost versus stability. And then the stability of the UK has quite often made it more rewarding to invest for the industry than say, I don't know, Iraq or somewhere, but it gets to the point where the, just the cost of doing business doesn't make it worthwhile for anything, but then maybe the smaller producers.
So it is there. It's heavily diminished. It tends to be a hub for Other locations. The, I guess the probably one of the few positives of covert is made remote working a lot easier. Our future at the moment. It's not ideological in the sense that I want to work for any particular industry.
And that's what makes me sound a bit mercenary. But I think that I guess my future might be in some sort of position whereby if a company needs someone who has experience of a different range of industries, which some service companies I think are cleverly exploiting. So you have companies on an actual operator, but they manufacture things for industries.
So they're looking for oil and nuclear renewables, they can service all these industries. I don't know at the moment. We, I, we love Japan. But it's not our home. We want our kids eventually to, I don't want them to feel displaced as they're growing up and we have family back in the UK.
So I see my future eventually as relocating back to the rural part of Scotland where I grew up. So my kids can have that kind of grounding.
Leafbox: And then would you ever consider working for government? replacing the the guy in Baku?
Andrew: I think that I would last about five minutes from what I read about the UK civil service.
It depends what it was. It's never going to happen. It would depend what it was, but from my, and this isn't, this is just speaking from what I read, not from personal experience, but from From the attitude that the establishment and the British government has, I, I just don't think that I would even get hired in the first place, I think that my attitude to life would disqualify me from doing that.
Pretty much any sort of position of influence like that. And I wouldn't get it anyway, to be honest with you as a 46 year old Scottish guy, I just, yeah, it would never happen.
Leafbox: Another question I have just back on oil. You mentioned your, you thought we're going to run out of oil. How. How much credence do you believe in the concept of peak oil?
When that's a very debatable topic and then there's, the conspiracy about hypogenic petroleum and, where petroleum actually comes from.
Andrew: Yeah. Peak oil is obviously shifted over the years and, I've seen that firsthand in terms of, again, with the, capitalism being a driver of Invention within the industry which comes up, really because of the sheer amount of money involved, there's so many inventions and really like technologically amazing inventions in terms of like directional drilling, things that they can do really are mind boggling drilling, like horizontal wells for, multiple kilometers under such high pressure.
I think that sorry, I forgot where I was going with this. I think that That level of innovation has delayed peak oil over the years and how, who knows, there's still a lot of oil there that we don't currently have the technology to access, for instance, especially in the Gulf of Mexico. So I think peak oil could shift.
I find it very difficult to believe like a really specific figure for that. And that has changed over the years. Demand is obviously going to change whether it goes up or down with, population and climate change and renewables. I think that the hypogenic oil theory is absolutely fascinating.
And I haven't even begun to try and understand it, but I think that is. Very interesting. And I'd be really interested to hear someone who's actually looked into whether they think it's accurate or not. It's obviously going to happen at some point, but I think we're pretty far away from it because even as we put in renewables, we put in nuclear, like I went back to my point about when I was talking to that British embassy official, like the sheer scale of, Hydrocarbon involvement in our modern industrial life is so incredibly difficult to untangle.
We may move away from it as a primary fuel source, but moving away from it as a requirement for life, for plastics, for medicines, for fertilizer, I don't currently see how that can be done. So I think there's going to be some sort of requirement for it for at least a significant amount of time.
Leafbox: Great. Andrew, is there anything else you want to share? Or I think this is an interesting. Overview of your career, but anything else you'd like to give this interest?
Andrew: Just, Oh, for one thing, I really appreciate the chance to talk about these things. I'm not in academia. So a lot of these things like bounce around my mind for years and bore my mind.
So I really appreciate the ability to talk about, I guess the biggest thing when I've been thinking about, what to discuss today was really I'm not an expert on climate change. I'm not an expert on, I'm not even really an expert on renewables or oil. I can just share my experiences. The thing that I find most frustrating is, and as I said to you, we seem to have lost the ability to have, this is why I like podcasts, we've lost the ability to have new and long form discussions where we can talk about Climate change, we can talk about oil versus renewables.
Can you recall the last time you heard an expert from the industry, an expert from renewables talk about the pricing mechanisms and subsidies? You never get that. Certainly not in the media that I see, in the UK, you get short soundbites, headlines. And we've lost that sort of what I grew up with the late night TV talk shows where people would sit around, smoking in a dark room and, but they would talk about these things for hours because they would assume the audience at a level of intelligence.
I think podcasting and the rise of the new media is really bringing that back, which is why I really like it. It's still not mainstream and it still doesn't, it doesn't really shape policy that much because it doesn't access the mainstream media. I wouldn't want anyone to listen to think that I'm being dogmatic on these issues because I feel uninformed myself.
But I would hope that in the future, this type of media might help. produce actual debates where we can actually learn something from experts and not politicians or media figures who are driven by corruption, essentially. Partisan views.
Leafbox: No, I think that's why I sent you that discussion I had with Jed.
He's a Marxist and you're definitely a capitalist, but I think you'd be very open to listening and you'd probably come to agreements on some of the environmental policies that need to be in place, but maybe differ on the ownership structures and incentives. Yeah. But I think that's still productive.
Right. So I think, I'm going back to the guy in Baku, the consular officer, maybe it was his youth or his inexperience, but. I think the long, yeah, understanding how complex things really are is very fruitful and useful.
Andrew: He was he was actually, this is why I thought, I wasn't sure whether he was senior or junior, but he was actually older than me at the time.
I was like late 30s and I wouldn't have put him. younger than like 45. He was definitely experienced, but I think that's that level of that. And again, I want to shy away from the word elite because there's a lot of terms as soon as you use them, people think, Oh, you're some conspiracy theory, crazy.
But I think it's that level of, I think it's almost the opposite. He has that much experience. He's been in that system for so long that. He has an inability to take a different viewpoint, as soon as you start saying something like that, he's well, you're just you're just you're not worth listening to because you're wrong, effectively, I think.
And I wouldn't want to be like that on the other side, that's why I quite like that, your podcast with Jed. This is going on so much, especially when it comes to the history of Marxism and communism and the destruction that's caused, but I absolutely would defend and be happy that he has that platform to to debate.
To broadcast that, and who knows, he might, and there were some things in there that I thought, actually that's a fair point, but this is, I just feel like this is so important. And this is what is missing from so much of this debate about climate change and oil and renewables. And it's so important as well.
There's literally nothing more important than our energy because it ties into the availability of education and medicine and travel and communication. Right, without. some form of mass energy production. We're right back to the medieval ages when your average life expectancy is what, like 30? We're back to, we're back to so far where we are now.
It's just, unimaginable. And it's again, just, to finalize that ties back to my kind of awakening and impression of Japan, that they have this sensible mix and the sheer irresponsibility of governments, especially my own one at the moment, who, we just shut down our last oil refinery.
We don't, we just don't have a plan to, to replace all these things. And it's just incredibly irresponsible and dangerous. I think,
Leafbox: Andrew I think we'll leave it at that. On a positive note, no, the UK, Europe, I think they're like self, it seems suicidal, their policies.
I have trouble understanding it. My, my dad was British actually, and it's hard to, he's from a British colony. But yeah, it's just very difficult to understand the geopolitics of it all. Especially when you compare it to Japan. So I think the biggest thing I want people to take away is the interdisciplinary aspect of your career is also interesting for people to take.
Jumping from the oil to kind of a renewable sector, and then it gives you a different perspective that I think is useful for people.
Andrew: Yeah, I appreciate that. I hope yeah, I hope some, someone, somewhere find something interesting about it for sure.
Leafbox: Great, Andrew. I appreciate all your wisdom and your humility as well. So I'm sure you have a busy day. Thank you so much.
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In this intimate conversation, Stephen Chamberlain, a former U.S. Coast Guard officer, small business owner, and writer, candidly discusses his personal struggles and victories. From navigating anxiety disorders to his cathartic discovery of writing and poetry, Steve opens up about his life journey. He delves into the complexities of moral injury, the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, his 40-year relationship with disordered eating and anxiety, and his pursuit of contentment through nomadic living and creative expression.
Steve's raw honesty provides a unique lens into the challenges of coping with men’s mental health issues while striving for fulfillment. His writing not only serves as a personal outlet but also connects him to a broader community of writers and readers interested healing and self-reflection.
Timeline:
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01:28 Background and Early Life
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03:04 Struggles with Disordered Eating, Anxiety, and Joining the Coast Guard
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04:22 Life in the Coast Guard and Personal Challenges
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05:47 Post-Retirement Life and Discovering a Nomadic Writing Journey
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07:35 Exploring New Ventures and Digital Nomadism
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09:50 Writing as a Cathartic Experience
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12:41 Peer Support and Mental Health Advocacy
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17:56 Moral Injury in the Coast Guard
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38:56 Struggles with Weight and Anxiety
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40:00 Understanding Male Anorexia and Its Impact
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40:47 The Battle Between Rational and Irrational Voices
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42:38 Poetry as a Means of Control
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45:14 Exploring Psychedelics for Treatment
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47:28 The Transformative Impact of Psychedelic Experiences
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58:13 Embracing Mortality and Planning Ahead
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01:03:28 Future Plans and Other Pursuits
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01:07:13 Connecting with the Audience
Connect with Steve and his writing @ Steve's Substack
Steve’s Collections of Poetry: My Raven and My Blackbird
AI Machine Transcription - Enjoy the Glitches!
Steve: Right off the bat, anyone who tries to write understands that writing is very difficult, but what I could do is write about my experiences. The things that I find easiest to write about are things I'm most familiar with, and the thing I'm most familiar with is what I'm feeling and thinking inside. This sounds clichéd, but it's true, cathartic and I found that relatability they feel less alone and that just encouraged me to write more. And quite frankly, if I have one person tell me that, "hey, that thing you wrote really resonated with me or helped me," I'm like a score! if I can help somebody, then it was worth putting out there.
Even if nobody reads them, it felt good to get them out. And it did feel cathartic to get it out. I've come to the conclusion that, what I want to get out of life in my remaining years is as many moments of contentment and fulfillment as I can.
[Music]
Leafbox: Good afternoon, Steve.
Before we start, I wanted to thank you. Even though you're a smaller publisher and you're just starting off on your journey of writing.
One of the things that really stood out to me about your writing is that it feels like it's coming from a very authentic place. And, my own writing and my own efforts across life. That's one of the hardest things to find and be true to so thank you for at least expressing in a way that feels genuine and true and in today's world I think that's a harder thing to do.
Before we start, why don't you just tell us, Steve, a little bit about who you are, maybe what you're writing about why you came to writing.
Steve: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm 57 years old, so I've been around for a little bit and my background is pretty varied.
I grew up in a suburb of Boston. Irish Catholic family, first generation to move into the suburbs from South Boston and second generation of my family to actually go to college. I went to a public school, and it, it was a pretty benign suburban existence.
I would say right up through my university years, I went to a commuter school, UMass University of Massachusetts in Lowell, Mass, and something I could afford in that day and age by working part time and lived at home and really had no, what I would call significant life experience. Until I left home and went to the Coast Guard's Officer Candidate School after college.
But I think it is noteworthy to say that like a lot of typical families of that era, I had, it was dysfunctional, but most people have some sort of dysfunction in their family. Alcoholic dad, very much a perfectionist. Everyone in the family seemed to be driven by anxiety created by their predecessors and I picked that up as well.
And it's notable to say that I developed an eating disorder in my high school years, which is a male in the 1980s I think was very eating disorders are stigmatized. Among all genders, even today, but being a guy in the 80s when there was really no infrastructure set up to, to diagnose, recognize, or treat it made it particularly challenging.
And I really got into triathlons and long distance running and marathons. Got to a really unhealthy weight. And, my mom did her best to get me in with psychologists and psychiatrists, but none of them really had a handle on how to deal with somebody like me. And it, it caused quite a bit of isolation for me in high school.
College was a little bit better simply because it was a commuter school and I would go do my work and come home. So I became quite a loner, but, for reasons that I can't describe other than just being impulsive in my early years, I applied after college to the Coast Guard's Officer Candidate School and somehow got in and spent about four months down in Virginia in basic training and then the next 25 years in the Coast Guard and the eating disorder I somehow managed.
Gained some weight was always a little odd with my eating habits, but and very excessive with my exercise habits and very rigid as I am to this day. But those 25 years in the Coast Guard were both fulfilling and beset by a little bit of inertia. I think it's a challenging job, but and as you get more.
Responsibility more senior becomes more challenging and more all encompassing, but by the same token, it's a secure job where even though you move every couple of years, the culture remains the same. So for a guy with anxiety and quite frankly, anorexia nervosa is an anxiety disorder when you get right down to it.
The Coast Guard was a relatively comfortable place for me. In 2015 I was serving in Alameda and living in San Francisco, which is where you and I met. And I also retired from the Coast Guard that year. At the time I was married, but my anxiety, which demonstrated itself in those days, I think is more of a extreme dedication to work kind of a workaholism, if you would call it that really, destroyed my marriage. And by 2017, 2018, we were divorced, which was really, for me, the point in time in which I think I gained a level of self awareness that A lot of my peers do not seem to have, and I'm not trying to be, I'm not trying to brag or anything like that because I tend to surround myself with friends like you who are self aware and do look inward and do understand they have egos and those egos are rather hard to control.
And but having that self awareness. This is really a great way to determine when your ego is getting the better of you. And it was the divorce that kind of opened my eyes to the fact that I had not been a good husband. That my dedication to work was one of these fleeting needs for professional affirmation that came at the expense of any sort of long term personal contentment.
And it was that self awareness obtained relatively late in life, my late forties, early fifties, that led me to writing and led me to trying several other Endeavors. I worked a little bit in the wine industry for three years and learned what I could at a small five person wine startup.
I impulsively bought Airstream trailer and spent about a year and a half, 2020 at the Covid years. As a matter of fact I launched my digital nomadism, as I called it in March of 2020. No, great plan to do that, but at the same time, the whole country. Pretty much shut down and spent a little over a year place really enjoying that kind of existence.
And fortunately with a military pension and a small business running some companies, alcohol compliance operations, I was able to support myself. And not like minutes overhead on the Airstream trailer I had I decided to stop and go back to Massachusetts for a couple of years, rented a small house.
And my mom and dad are there. They're older now. They're still in the same town I grew up in. My sisters are there. But I found after about three years there, my eating disorder had I guess I'd say I relapsed a little bit, not full scale after decades of it being more or less managed, but not certainly cured.
Realized that I was going to be stuck with that for the rest of my life, but also thinking my time in Massachusetts was a good time to really become introspective, maybe more present, practice meditation investigate psychedelics which you helped me with Three years later, to be honest I didn't do it while I was there, just thought about it a lot and and really work on myself.
And quite frankly, after those three years had passed I felt that I honestly, I've been inside my own head so much time that I was feeling worse, not better. And I was also feeling restless, which I did not expect to feel after decades of moving every couple of years. I thought I'd be quite ready to settle and I wasn't.
So I very impulsively decided that rather than using a trailer, I'd try and see if I could do the same Nomadic existence with Airbnbs, if I could find Airbnb hosts who would rent long term to me. And right off the bat, I found somebody who gave me a two year lease on a place in Florida.
But the writing really started I'd say around the time I launched in the Airstream 2020, where I started a blog about, my trip. And right off the bat, anyone who tries to write understands that writing is very difficult. In all people who write fiction I cannot write dialogue.
I it's way too challenging for me. But what I could do is write about my experiences. And I think what you were getting at the beginning of this conversation was that, the things that I find easiest to write about are things I'm most familiar with and the thing I'm most familiar with is what I'm feeling and thinking inside again, something I never could have done before my divorce.
But it helped me get to a place where I felt it was almost, and this sounds clichéd but it's true, cathartic to write about things that I was feeling, I was thinking and then publishing them in different venues like Substack and where I am now and Medium where I was before and getting not a lot of feedback, some feedback.
And I found that relatability was on one hand, a really good hook for a personal essay because people enjoy reading things that are relatable to them. They feel less alone. I enjoy getting that feedback for obvious reasons. Somebody liked what I wrote, but also because I feel less alone while somebody else feels this way too.
And that just encouraged me to write more. And I, I am not particularly skilled at poetry, and I'm really honest, I don't love reading poetry, but I decided I like the structure of poems. And I Picked up a pen and tried to write a few poems. I don't think my poetry is particularly good or particularly musical or the right words, but I do the challenge of trying to find the right words to condense into a particular structure to convey a certain idea.
And that idea really shot back to relatability and I started writing some short haiku, some tankas and a couple of other poem forms about my anxiety, about not so much the eating disorder, although I have written a couple of essays about the eating disorder, but just the way I was feeling in the world.
And even if nobody reads them, it felt good to get them out. And it did feel cathartic to get it out. And I haven't written poetry in a little while, but for a couple of years it was really an obsession of mine and I did get some good feedback and there were people who could relate to some of the things that I wrote and some of the metaphors that I used for my anxiety.
And for, since that. Point in time, I have started a peer support company with a couple of Coast Guard veterans. Even though I've given up on myself in terms of therapy helping, I do feel better just not by not struggling so much to try and get better. That probably made me feel 10 percent better overall, but I do realize there's a need for
More health care, mental health care workers and as a component to any sort of a treatment plan peer support really resonated with me because there's evidence that shows that it works. Look at any. Substance abuse group. That's the strength in it is sitting around with people with shared experience, but it gets back to my writing too, which is relatability.
If you don't feel like you're the only one feeling that way, or you're the only one with a, an addiction, or the only one who's experienced sexual trauma, and you can't tell anyone about it, but then you're in a room with people who have stories that are remarkably like yours, who feel remarkably like you do.
Who who went through the same journey that you're going through. That in and of itself has a healing aspect. When I had the opportunity to start this company called Mindstrong Guardians earmarked towards the Coast Guard and Coast Guard people fall in the cracks between Department of Defense and first responders.
So many folks are traumatized and don't get help. We. We felt we'd found a niche, and that leads me to today.
Leafbox: Steve, could I just interrupt you? I want to talk about your poetic forms and your kind of nomadic lifestyle. But I want to go back to when you were after college, why did you just impulsively join the Coast Guard?
Was that an escape for you? Or what were you looking for? Were you looking for? I'm just curious.
Steve: I think I had romanticized the Coast Guard, Robert. I grew up outside of Austin. The Coast Guard Academy was in Connecticut. And There was nothing complex about it. I got my hands on a Coast Guard Academy bulletin, the front of the bulletin being the kind of booklet that describes the Coast Guard Academy to potential applicants.
And the front cover was the Coast Guards has America's tall ship the Coast Guard Cutter Eagle, which is a three masted barb. And it's a sailing vessel. Very old school and it looked really cool to me. And I had spent my summers working. near my hometown in Concord, Massachusetts at a place called Minuteman National Historical Park, the old North Bridge, but they also had the homes of Emerson and Hawthorne and places where Melville had written.
And I really got, and Thoreau and I really got into their writings and the idea of this. The ship that looked like it came right out of, to me at that stage, Moby Dick really appealed to me. And that's as deep as it got. I thought to myself, I'm going to go here. This is a cool school.
I'm going to have this maritime life by I grew up really enjoying our, the family's annual trip from the suburb to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the seashore. And part of the reason for that is the two weeks a year, my family was on Cape Cod and we were rigid and religious about going there, nothing bad ever happened.
My, my aunt and uncle were there. My cousins were there. My dad didn't drink. He hung out with us people didn't fight. They loved it. And I just associated. Even though I wasn't an ocean going guy and didn't have that background, I associated those two, two weeks a year on the beach with a calm serenity that I didn't have the 50 other weeks of the year, the 50 other weeks of the year.
I was anxious about, what's my dad going to be like tonight. I don't want to go to school tomorrow. It's one thing or another. And then I'd have this two week long exhale. And for some reason, I taught that to the Coast Guard Academy. So I applied for the Academy and I didn't get in, which was no shocker.
I didn't have great grades. But I kept that idea in my head and after graduating from UMass, I thought there must be another way in and there was so I drove myself to a recruiter in Boston and submitted an application and, Lo and behold, they accepted me and the acceptance wasn't a deeply thought out thing.
It was just, I'll have a job and I won't have to live at home. And that's that it'll buy me a few years time because there was a three year active duty commitment after you got out.
And I thought this is what I need. Otherwise, what am I going to do? Just, live in Boston all my life, or I had no plans, no aspirations, no nothing.
So this was something. Yeah. I'm glad I took it, but that's as deep as it went.
Leafbox: Steve, one of the essays that I really enjoyed was, maybe I have a bias too, I, I've interviewed another author who was a Coast Guard vet, and they're the forgotten branch, like you said, of the military, but one of the things you wrote about was your concept of moral injury in the Coast Guard and across I guess government employees and all branches of, employees across all groups and organizations. Could you expand on what you mean by moral injury and maybe some of the personal experiences you had during the Coast Guard?
Steve: Absolutely. I'm glad you brought up moral injury because.
Moral injury in general is not something that most people think about when they think about trauma. And when they do think about it, they think about the most obvious examples of moral injury. Moral injury is basically having to do something that is counter to your personal values. And having to do it, when I say that, as A matter of carrying out your responsibilities, which in public service can happen quite often.
So the first place you go with that is you teach people. And I think people inherently know that killing other people or hurting other people is wrong. And suddenly you train somebody, whether they're in the army or the Marine Corps. Maybe whatever to kill other people and you put them in a position where they are, that's their job to kill other people and they end up killing other people.
They have done something essentially at cross purposes with their internal values and that creates a conflict which in and of itself can develop into trauma. There are other ways that moral injury can occur, and the one I've seen most often with Coast Guard veterans is search and rescue, and my role was not being out on a boat, pulling people out of the water.
My role was basically planning searches, approving search areas, figuring out What resources to send, but most of all figuring out when you had to suspend or end a search, not having found the person you're looking for and to tell the family that you're suspending the search which I've had to do three times in my career.
And I've, plenty of people who have done it much more frequently than that, but you remember every time. And that there's a huge vulnerability to moral injury in. In that sort of work, because you feel like I am in a life saving organization, I joined the organization because I want to save lives, at least that's part of what the Coast Guard does.
And here I am telling somebody that not only have I not saved their loved one's life, but I'm giving up.
People obviously don't react well to that. That really, Increases that feeling that I have fundamentally failed at my job. I have fundamentally violated one of my core values. I would not want somebody to give up looking for my best friend, my brother, my sister, my parent, and this guy here is telling me he's given up.
Now, when we suspend a search, we don't do it lightly. We keep them informed throughout the search process and prepare them for the possibility. But, we look at how long can somebody survive in water at that temperature? What are the odds of finding them? This search area expands every hour and on.
So you reach a point where continued searching really isn't going to yield results. You are damn near confident that you're not going to find that person. My essay was a little bit different and surprised me because it was nothing like that and just to touch on the area that really saying it scarred me or it definitely created moral injury for me, but it was such a relatively benign event that two decades later, I still scratch my head and say, why did, why does this to this day?
still make me feel emotional. And essentially, I was the, working in the U. S. Embassy in the Bahamas, which I was the Coast Guard's liaison officer there. So my job was to interact with Bahamian officials when we had essentially cross border operations going on or interdictions of smugglers and that sort of thing.
And in one particular case a U. S. Coast Guard vessel intercepted a raft of Cuban refugees in Bahamian territorial seas, so we returned those people to the Bahamas. And my job was to meet the Coast Guard ship at the pier in the Bahamas to make sure there was an orderly transfer of the Cuban refugees from the U.S. Coast Guard to the Bahamian immigration officials. Thank you very much. This particular group of refugees came in on a Christmas morning. So I was in my uniform on the pier waiting for the Coast Guard ship. Coast Guard ship comes in Coast Guard. Immigration authorities are there with their vans.
And I knew they would take these people to a detention center in the center of new Providence Island, where Nassau Bahamas is located. And eventually transport them back to Cuba. I'd done this before and it was routine, but there were, I remember there were 26 people and I, they came off the gangway of Coast Guard ship to the pier and there was a little girl, maybe five or six who had a doll and.
I was on the gangway, and she was struggling to get up on the gangway, so she just looked at me and handed me the doll, and then I helped her up, and then walked her over the gangway and got her to the pier, and she looked at me and put her arms out again for the doll, and I gave her the doll back, and then she and the rest of the people got in the van and went to the detention center, and I never saw them again.
I went home that day after that, and 20 years later, that still makes me feel sad, and I still wonder about that girl, and I feel like this isn't what I signed up to do. I didn't sign up to take this person whose family had placed her on this unsafe raft, pushed her into the water, to head to the U.S. with an unknown outcome. And suddenly she's in the Bahamas, not even her family's intended location for her and going to a detention center at age of five or six. And it wasn't a brutal detention center, but it wasn't pleasant. I had been there several times. It was barracks, basically, in the middle of the island with razor wire around it.
And then back to Cuba, where she may or may not be. Reintroduced to whatever family she had, and it just felt so out of line with any reason I had to have joined the Coast Guard or any personal value. I felt at the time and throughout my 25 years, I compartmentalize things and. desensitize myself to things like this, but that one I was never able to do it.
And like I said, I've done Mexican notifications that haven't bothered me that much. Yeah I wrote my essay on that, but I think the Coast Guard really does, as you said, is the forgotten service because people assume that, hey, if you're not being shot at, what do you have to complain about?
And I see Coast Guard veterans all the time with untreated PTSD from doing the things that Coast Guard people do which are very similar to things first responders do. And often they're 18, 19 year old people out there in the front lines, and they're either, shooting an engine out of a smuggling vessel to stop it, or they're trying to find somebody that they don't end up finding, or they find somebody after they passed away, or they find somebody after a horrible boating accident and, all of these things are traumatic in their own right, but when When you say that, Hey, I didn't sign up to come out and shoot people.
I signed up to save people and I didn't save this person. I guess that's where my story comes home to roost is I didn't save this person. I just made life a lot worse for this person and it doesn't feel good. I just didn't expect it to not feel good. 20 years later.
Leafbox: Does the Coast Guard now have the same culture? You wrote another essay about I think it's called mental personal protective equipment, the mPPE. What's the current state of like when you talk to vets at your officer level, are you finding the same kind of Moral injury and trauma that's manifesting. How are they expressing it? Or are they, alcoholism? What are the issues that other vets are really facing now?
Steve: Yeah, that's a great question. Because I think culturally there have been incremental changes, but the Coast Guard, like the other services is very much suck it up type environment always has been. It's a little less. So now the Coast Guard has created a cadre of mental health providers that are accessible.
Mental health is a little less stigmatized, but it's far from where it needs to be. And I think it's worth noting that particularly an officer in the military, and that includes the Coast Guard, we all know and refer to our careers as zero defect environments. And I knew that, and that just stokes up anxiety that you're going to make a mistake.
And a mistake is, hey, my search pattern was wrong and somebody drowned. You start to become more worried about your career than somebody drowning. The slightest mistake can end your career. And it really is your defect. So when it comes to the stigmatization of mental illness, no officer wants to acknowledge it.
And what the Coast Guard has done is created a little more access. to mental health support, but has done nothing substantial about changing the culture. So if I were in the Coast Guard right now I would never acknowledge having a high level of anxiety, never acknowledge having an eating disorder.
I never acknowledge any sort of mental illness as an officer in the military, because that is a career ender in most cases. Less so now, but still culturally, there is a fear. I'm going to lose my security clearance if I go to see, seek help. If I go to a therapist, I know a lot of what they do now, Robert and have done for years is go out privately and pay out of pocket.
And yeah, I have a good friend who is an excellent Coast Guard lawyer, but he suffers from severe depression. And the Coast Guard doesn't know this. He is on SSRIs, and the Coast Guard doesn't know this. And he has, in his particular case, SSRIs, antidepressant drugs, pharmaceuticals, and therapy.
He views them as having been life saving. For him knowledge to the Coast Guard that he is receiving therapy or using this medication because real or not, he is fearful that it would end his career and so that's one way of coping with it. And that's probably the healthiest way of coping with it. Outside of the Coast Guard, I've met veterans who are alcoholics or use alcohol as a crutch.
And simply don't seek help because we fall into that trap too, where we feel like we're sucking resources away from some young combat vet in the army. If I see a therapist at the veterans administration, and I may be entitled to do that, I am. Because I'm one of the five, six armed services now, but most Coast Guard people I've talked to when we were developing our company, our peer support company felt like I don't want to steal resources from, from the army, from the Marines, from these people who really deserve it when I don't deserve it.
And that's, and as a result, they're untreated. And when you're untreated and you've suffered trauma, you live a life of suffering. That is in many cases, unnecessary if you the right treatment. So I think in the Coast Guard, this is particularly acute, but I think across all the services, when you look at the suicide rate of military veterans in general there's no argument that something isn't happening here and it's not just.
I was in a combat area and I saw really bad things. It's that you have to move every couple of years that families are always under strain. That, it's hard enough to maintain a marriage when you're in a more stable environment. It's really challenging when one person's At home and unable to start a career because you're moving every couple of years for your career and deployments are extremely stressful where you don't see your family for, 12, 15 months at a pop.
It's a stressful existence in general. It's worthwhile and fulfilling in many ways, but from a personal standpoint it's, it can be. That's the best answer I can give.
And then Steve, you didn't do any writing when you were in service, right? So this became a post divorce liberation escape?
Steve: Yeah. It, I couldn't have done it, Robert. I utterly lacked the introspection that I needed to do. I, that I needed to sustain my marriage. I didn't, I realized that my being a workaholic was not good for my marriage, but it was a blind spot for me. I thought in the future.
And I, I don't think I would have it's funny because had we stayed married, I'd still be rather obtuse when it came to introspection. I probably never would have started writing. So it's the divorce spurred the self awareness and the self awareness spurred the writing.
Leafbox: And then what's the response? You're writing a Medium and Substack. Have you shared essays and poems and other writing with vets or how are they responding to writing as a release?
Steve: There are some vets who see my writing and it's funny because on Substack they usually come to me via email directly if they like something or something resonated with them rather than say anything on Substack directly.
But it hasn't really resonated in particular with veterans. Some of the things I write about, anxiety is universal in, in our culture anyway. It, I would say extreme anxiety, anxiety over things that you look at and you're like, why am I anxious over this, that I had to do this today when this is relatively easy to get time.
But I've also found that, if you eliminate and avoid the big things, then the anxiety is just as intense with the little things. So that's some of the stuff that I write about. But I will say I really hesitated to put anything out there about the eating disorder because of the stigma associated with men.
And eating disorders. I only recently put something out on Substack because I just got to a point where I'm like, you know what, if it helps somebody, great. If a few folks didn't know about it haven't come across it, then they can ask me questions about it. But I do feel awkward. I feel embarrassed.
I'm a guy, I'm not supposed to have an eating disorder. I even feel that way. And I've had it for 40 years. But I also realized that, you know what, if I live another 20, 30 years I'm going to have it. It's not going away. So I think I just have to come to some sort of accommodation. An acceptance of that. I'm not saying it's untreatable. It is treatable. It's tough to treat anorexia, but I've just decided that, therapies I've tried for anxiety haven't been particularly effective for me. So that's just a personal choice I've made.
Leafbox: I think, all the writers I gravitate towards and I interviewed, I think one of the main things I appreciate is when they're truly honest.
And even though you have these issues of shame and anxiety, I think it resonates that it's coming from a place that feels very genuine. So thank you. For listeners, can you give us, I don't know much about male anorexia. What does that manifest as? Is that kind of like an Adonis complex similar to bodybuilders or what does this mean? .
Steve: Yeah, that, that was spot on. There is. Another disorder, and I don't know the name of it, for young male adolescents who want to get big, so to speak. They're obsessed with getting large. For me, it was more insidious than that. And in my teens, I saw my dad as an alcoholic.
Now I look back at my dad and I'm like, wow, we're exactly the same. He was a highly anxious perfectionist like me. And like most anxious people, he didn't like uncertainty and like it's full of uncertainties and he would self medicate with alcohol. And I thought, I don't want to be anything like that.
I want to be the opposite. Right at the beginning of the running craze in the U S I decided I don't know. I was maybe 15, 16 I was gonna start running. And I started running and the reason was, so I, cause I didn't want to be like my dad. I wanted to be healthy. And then that kind of transitioned into, I'm going to eat healthier too.
And I'm going to make my own food. And then I got very strict about what I ate, not with an intent to lose weight just to with, I'm not going to eat junk anymore. In the 70s and the 80s, that was particularly tough. Everything was processed and prepackaged. But I found so I became very choosy.
And because of the running and the desire to eat healthy, which were honest and good and benign at first. I lost weight for some reason. As I lost weight, Robert, I found it anathema to, I just didn't want to gain it again. I didn't even think of it as a disorder. It was like, no, if I'm losing weight and I'm out participating in triathlons, which were evolving in the eighties as a thing.
And, I was doing five or six triathlons a summer up in Massachusetts and I was 19 by the time I really hit my peak triathlon years. And I ran Boston marathon in 1990 in two hours and 40 something minutes. And that was walking a lot the last six miles. And I thought I could really do something here.
And the weight loss, while I don't think contributing to it, probably undermining my performance. I looked at that as. Helping me excel. I'm like if I'm losing weight and I'm running sub two Boston marathons, what could I do if I lost more weight and trained more? So that is how it came on. I didn't even really think of it as an eating disorder, and it wasn't really discussed in those days.
But when I look at some of the I've destroyed every photograph I could find of myself in those days because I looked emaciated. I saw my high school yearbook picture and Honestly, Robert, I was, I'm six foot tall. I think I had gotten down to about 128, 127 pounds. I was obviously malnourished, but I didn't think of it that way.
I thought this is the path to better performance, more exercise. More strictness with my food. And of course all my triathlon heroes were eating this way. And I thought this is the way I got to go. The Coast Guard interrupted that. And somehow I got up to by my thirties, about 170 pounds.
I was happy with that. I was okay with it. I even wanted to gain more, I felt healthy. I felt good. And then. As I gained more responsibility in the Coast Guard I my anxiety drove me less or drove me away from strength training, which was the only thing really maintaining my, my, my physique to just endurance training, which eased my anxiety.
And, my weight dipped a little bit, but it was okay when I left the Coast Guard. And then, COVID comes along and I'm in the airstream and starting to feel really weak and never weighing myself because I had anxiety about getting on scale. It was either too heavy or too light, one or the other.
But I sat for a year in the airstream when I went to see the doctor about why I felt so exhausted all the time that I dropped I don't know, 12, 13 pounds from the time I started the airstream and that just re sparked the whole thing in my head. So the thing that I thought I was at least managing, I wasn't managing, but anorexia to answer your question, because I straight away from that is it's the same.
It's, bulimia is where you purge anorexia is got its purge element, but the purges exercise and calorie control. And I it's the same in men as it is in women. It's a control thing. It's an anxiety disorder. It is the, I've got no control over what's happening in the world. I can't control what's happening in my body, but it's not articulated that way.
And I think the best way to articulate it every man or woman I've talked to with anxiety with anorexia. Has, and I've written about this. I don't know if I've published the most recent one yet as two voices in their head, and I call it a rational voice, which knows what I should be doing to live a healthy life.
And the fact that I am undernourished even to this day and the irrational voice, which is. Hey you're doing fine. You're surviving like this. Why would you want to gain any more weight? It's irrational, but it wins every time. It, my metaphor is the irrational voice always ends up with it.
It's booed on the neck of the rational voice. And I, I don't know how to overcome that, but I have found that to be universal with anorexia sufferers, and they have the two voices in their head, and the irrational voice always seems to win and people who don't have it, they don't win.
Can't understand how I can look in the mirror or anyone who's under nurse can look in the mirror and feel that they are overweight. Even when your rational voice is there, you screaming at you that you are fine. In fact, you need to gain a few pounds that living a life where you're under 6 percent body fat every day.
Maybe that's why you're cold all the time. Steve, is not a healthy way to live. I have osteoporosis now. If I had been a smoker or had been somebody who ate bad foods and had a heart disease, I'd do something. But with the osteoporosis, the irrational voice just argues it away. And I'm like, no, but that came because I've been undernourished and over exercising.
And that's going to be a problem as I age. It's an irrational disease that's born of anxiety and control. And unless you're there, you can't really get it, but I will say it. It's got the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, I think even more so than depression.
Leafbox: Steve going back to your poetry, I just, do you see a parallel?
I was surprised by all the poems have very structured, you have haikus, tankas, minkas, something called the cinquain , which I've never heard of before. But all these very structured. So is that a release? How does it interact with your control issues?
Steve: It's, it's a manifestation of control issues.
It's; I'm glad you brought that up. You're the first person to actually see that. As I said earlier, I'm not a poet. I don't, I'm not particularly creative from my perspective. What attracted me to poetry and in particular to very structured poems, haiku is simple, but I'm like, wow, you have to say as much as you can say using that 5, 7, 5 syllable structure.
I like that. It's, it feeds that desire to be in control. It's a challenge and it is spot on. A manifestation and one could say you're not doing anything to, do some free verse. And it's now I don't want to do free first. I, that scratches my itch to do a haiku or a tanka and yeah, you're spot on.
It's. You call it OCD, call it anxiety, call it what you will. That's what it is. But I, I honestly don't, I've accepted it. I'm like, fine. It gives me a moment of fulfillment to get that out there. It gives me, however long it takes me to generate the poem a period of contentment. And I've come to the conclusion that, what I want to get out of life in my remaining years is as many moments of contentment and fulfillment as I can.
Because what else is there, and I, struggling to fix myself wasn't working. So writing a haiku and spending a couple of hours on it or whatever it takes does that for me. And I'm like, fine, I'll take it. If my OCD, pursuing my OCD and straightening up the picture on the wall gives me a feeling of contentment, I'll take it.
Because. Time is finite, and you really begin to realize that when I think for me, when you get close to 60, you're like, wow, there, there's a window of time here, just be as content as possible for as often as possible and accept the discontent is just a contrast. So you appreciate the contented periods,
Leafbox: Steve, maybe we could talk about, I wanted to see how you would. Free flow for prose, but maybe we can talk about your experience with psychedelics and how that maybe was the opposite of control.
Steve: Yeah, absolutely. I became interested in psychedelics during my period in Massachusetts that affixed me period as a potential cure for anxiety, OCD, is like many people you're watching documentaries about the effectiveness of psychedelics for certain mental health conditions.
But when I got to that point where I'm like, you know what, I'm just going to accept myself as I am, I still was interested in psychedelics as an experience, but I didn't want to hang my head on the idea that I'd come out of a, a trip and be suddenly cured of anxiety. That to me would have just led to disappointment.
It's unrealistic. And I actually talked to you and my big concern was trying to sort a good guide. Who would provide me with good support. I didn't want a therapist at this period of time with, because the psychedelic trip to me was about preparation. It's about set and setting.
It's about being self aware. It's about being a lot of things and not just taking some mushrooms and, wherever you happen to be and saying, wow, that was a great trip. Like you would drink a beer or something. So I found you helped me find a location in Oregon. And I hired a good guide and we did a lot of preparation and a lot of attention setting, and because I was flying from Florida to Portland, I decided to have two trips during a 10 day period.
And I self prepared, the location, the setting was incredible. And that, that was huge. I couldn't have done this in an improper location. It was quiet, it was peaceful. It was a port Portland craftsman house and the room was comfortable and safe. And my guide was with me the whole time.
And the first.
I, and it became this battle with me. It was a moderate dose of psilocybin. It was it was for, therapeutic dose, but not extreme. And I just, For some reason went into it, not really having expectations, but thinking as soon as it hit me, I'm like, I'm, it was Steven anxious, Steve, they're saying, I'm not going to let something control.
I'm not going to let it control me. I flexing and unflexing my muscles the whole time. And while I felt it was a significant event, I certainly didn't get the most out of it. So three days later, I go back. We agree on a much larger dose and I had really focused on not fighting it. The most significant experience I ever had in my life, Robert, why I couldn't articulate it to you.
It's like I was saying about anorexia. If you haven't been there, you don't get it. People who have experienced psychedelics will get it. It wasn't easy for it, but it was definitely ecstatic. It was unifying, but not in a blissful way. It was, if I had to describe it physically, it was a series of fever dreams that would start and stop with the guide's soundtrack, every new track would end one fever dream and start another, I don't even remember a lot of what was going on, but I do remember feeling so gratified that I hadn't tried to fight it, that I did feel this unification, this oneness that I.
I had what you call an afterglow for several days. On my flight home, I was talking to people at the airport bar while waiting for my flight. I don't do that. I was had striking up conversations with people. I'm a good flyer, but I don't like turbulence. When the plane hits turbulence, I get anxious about it.
Plane hit a lot of turbulence in the way home. It didn't. latest, it was just this acceptance. What happens for the next week. I would say I was more clearly not just, I think I'm more empathetic. It was, I was more empathetic and a nicer person. Did it wear off? Yeah. But, Oh my God. The fact that a week after this experience.
I still feel this glow is just incredible. And I would say coming out of the trip that afternoon I felt exhausted and it's like finishing a marathon, if you ask me as I'm just ending the run, if I'm going to do it again, I'm going to tell you, no, never, that's, it was horrible.
Never. But if you ask me two hours later, I'm going to be like, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That this is the most significant experience of my life. I could go into detail about what I experienced, but there's nothing really to tell that would knock anybody's socks off. I think it's just, if you've done it you get what I'm saying.
And if you haven't done it I look around at people, my peers, ex military guys who I know will never try it. I feel bad for them. I'm like you're never going to get to, wow. And I want to do this. It's something I don't want to do frequently, but I want to do it regularly. And did it cure my anxiety?
No, but I wasn't trying to cure my anxiety. It was to this day, I will be, I am grateful that I did it. And I'm interested in trying, ketamine or, Nor am I a PTSD sufferer who might benefit from MDMA, which I think shows great promise, but psilocybin and hallucinogenics strike me as just very cliché and mind opening and they are.
Leafbox: Steve, when you came back from your trip, how has it affected your creativity in writing? You keep saying that you're not creative, but you're sharing and producing. So did you feel more free?
Steve: Yeah, I think I've always felt free and open with my writing. And I think I was self aware enough that some folks said did you have any revelations when you were dripping?
And I thought, no, not really. I, I kind of have explored all that stuff, but I wasn't expecting that. Yeah, there was this I did, I wrote a poem or two about the experience. I was exuberant and excited about the world of psychedelics. I think I even talked to you about what more can I do in this field?
It, my, my writing has always been open, but I think done it, and then I wrote an essay about it on Substack Ever. I don't think, for example, I would have published. A piece on my eating disorder. Had I not just gone through that and thought, why not? Again if the idea is somebody may benefit from it.
And a few people may think less of me because of it, then it's worth putting it out there. And I don't think I would have done that had I not had the psychedelic experience. I think there is an element of a psychedelic trip that kind of, I don't want to say green lights you to be more expressive and more open, but reveals to you the fact that there's minimal downside and a lot of upside to being more open and honest.
And quite frankly, if I have one person tell me that, hey, that thing you wrote really Resonated with me or helped me. I'm like, if there were 10 haters out there, I've written some things on white privilege, and there are a lot of haters who have gotten back to me on that. But 10 haters to one person saying that you helped me.
I'm like a score, if I can help somebody, then it was worth putting out there. So I think it just pushed me over the edge, Robert, where I felt comfortable on that. In writing about the eating disorders and putting it out there.
Leafbox: Do you also, I think, some of your writing I'm curious about, you have a lot of animals in your poetry.
Do you ever think about that? Or, there's a psychedelic parallel. Some of the the tropes of psychedelics, the coyote. So I'm curious if there's any, what's the use of animals in your poetry and writing?
Steve: The animals and the most frequent one I use are actually just literary metaphors that resonate with me. That that no one would be surprised that, a coyote, even if it's a relatively benign animal. It's it's, it implies a threat. For me, the raven and the blackbird are the animals I go to the most in part, because I do the of Edgar Allen Poe. And of course, he's, most famous for the raven, but the raven struck me as the perfect metaphor for anxiety, a raven circling over your head and digging its talents into you the blackbird.
Struck me as a perfect metaphor for depression. I can't tell you why, not really, the origins of these metaphors are not in, in psychedelics as much as they are in just starting out with a literary interest that I fancy in terms of being great ways in my head to articulate an abstract idea. And I don't know if everybody gets it, the Raven being a metaphor for anxiety is a way to make anxiety physical and real.
And they're
obviously a good way to to express anxiety. But the raven, I think works and it works for me. And I've often wondered, Robert, I'm like, I wonder if anybody even understands what I'm putting out, not because it's particularly complex, but just because it's particularly personal and people may not, I think the poem you referred to with the coyote was serenity, where I was describing a benign, serene walk or something like that.
And then the coyote appears. I'm like it's, That's the uncertainty of anxiety, even butting into that moment and always around the bend, like what's going to happen now,
Leafbox: What's paradoxical is all of those animals are also quite free, right? And then going back to what you said about joining the Coast Guard, there's an element of that freedom in the ocean, the sailing, the kind of, And I think you have another poem that I enjoy called Quietus this about good sailing.
Yeah. Yeah. And it seems like there's a, you're always, I don't want to personalize it or psycho Freudian read it, but there seems to be an element of desire for freedom and exploration. And the coyote itself is an animal that's quite stoic and free from exploring the West, and the Raven as well.
Steve: They are. And you're, Your insightfulness is pretty remarkable because throughout my period of time working with a therapist several years ago, I kept telling the therapist, I'm like, the guy I want to be is the guy who just, I want to put on some weight. I want to relax a little bit.
I want to smoke an occasional cigar, a little vice that I like. I don't want to worry about everything. I ride a motorcycle now. Why? Because I feel a sense of freedom on that motorcycle, a sense of happiness and contentment on that motorcycle that I don't get any other time of the day. While I say I've accepted my anxiety, I have because I'm tired of struggling against it.
You're spot on and I hadn't really thought of the freedom of the animals that way, but the guy I want to be is, I, you look at motorcycle culture and yeah, there's the outlaw motorcycle culture, but there's also this, Motorcycle clubs originated not to break the law, but just this people who just didn't want to be tethered.
The way I live now, I can pack all my belongings in a Subaru hatchback. I don't own stuff and that's by choice. But there's an element of, I'm struggling to be this guy who is that freak coyote, but also burdened with this anxiety that, that lashes me to a routine that is predictable and secure.
Leafbox: You know what? It's a contradiction. Yeah. One of the freeing things that interests listeners is that you told me the story about grave buying and how that might be an act of freedom.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. This is something that most people don't understand. I referring back to earlier in our conversation when I say Cape Cod was our vacation place where nothing bad ever happened.
There is that town on the Cape that we. We always visited Brewster, Massachusetts. I got it in my head that, I want a green burial. I articulate this to family and friends who I brought into the conversation as I just don't want to be a burden. I'm a single guy with no kids.
And if something happens to me, I don't want it to be a pain in the neck for anybody to have to deal with it. So that's why I'm doing this. But the real reason I'm doing it is because I'm picking my place. And I bought a, the only real estate I own is a 10 by 10 plot in an old sea captain's cemetery in Brewster, Massachusetts on Cape Cod.
And it gave me such a feeling of happiness to do it and they're like what that's, we don't talk about that in, in our society. But for me, it's no I went out this summer, I was up visiting and I went to see it. And it made me happy to know I had it. And the gentleman who I who's on the cemetery commission said, if there's a stone cutter in town, this is Cape Cod's old school stone cutter who can, do a tombstone for you if you want it.
And I'm like sure. I, why not design my own tombstone? And I hate to admit, I paid a lot of money, like 10, 000 bucks for an old colonial slate tombstone. And I am in a joking way, using an image from Poe's poem the Raven on that tombstone. And a Raven. And the word nevermore, which anyone who's read the poem will understand.
And, then my information and this stonecutter is going to put it up for me. I've told very limited people that because people really think it's over the top. But again, my, my family members who would be left handling it. I'm like this way, exactly where it is and you can, it just makes it easier for you.
But you, I am serious in that. I'm going to have a small celebration of life party, for myself at that location next year with that tombstone up. It might be just me and my sisters or my niece, or, the folks who gather down there every year.
But I thought what's the point of not being there for that? It, there is it's a place to rest and I don't mean this. And I tell people this, I look at death as a. When I'm feeling particularly anxious as there'll be an end to it, just like I opened my eyes during the psychedelic experience when I was getting fatigued.
I'm ready for it. And then I saw my guide there. And I'm like, we talked about this. It does end. Don't panic. It will end. And right now you want it to end because you've been at it for six hours or so. And I look at death the same way. There's an end. I don't look at it. It's not a suicidal ideation.
And that's, if I tell anybody that, Robert, that's straight, that's the place to go. Is or you're gonna hurt yourself. I'm like, no, I'm not gonna hurt myself. It just calms me down to know that there's an end. You And I don't want to struggle like this forever. So yeah I'm a member of a Swiss organization called Dignitas, which performs assisted suicide.
My fear is Alzheimer's, like if that hits me and I'm still cognizant, but diagnosed that to me is a relief. I'm like, okay, I feel better. And I am, as I said earlier, trying to find ways to feel more contented. And I'm like, I've taken care of these things. Part of it is I'm on planner.
That's what anxiety does. But there is an element of fulfillment in doing these things that is indescribable. And I it's just so out of bounds for what we can talk about in our culture that it's hard to really describe that to people without them thinking, Oh, you bought a grave and a tombstone and you signed up for this Dignitas company and assisted suicide and people just assume the worst.
And it's no, this is the best. This is the best. I hope I live another 30 years if I'm not lucky. That's my plan. But if something intervenes, I'm okay with this. I guess the way I put it is I'm terrified of dying, but I have no fear of death. If that makes sense. The moment itself is.
Creates some anxiety as it should. But the after part of it, I'm like, no, it's, call it what you want, call it a Buddhist Nirvana. But yeah, that's I've done that. And I'm just waiting to see what the stone cutter comes up with.
Leafbox: Steve, you said for positive reformation that you want to live in another 30 years, what do you imagine filling the next 30 years with? You have your peer support group you've started and what other projects do you want to focus your attention on more writing, less writing, more trips. So what do you imagine for the next 30 years?
Steve: And I'm just putting that out. So I know one thing I learned when I left the coast guard, which might be a surprise is I will never see that my schedule was very structured there, and I think that was helpful.
To me in anybody's schedule at work, you've got to be a place from this hour to that hour. And then if you lose that structure, a lot of people are lost. I thought I'd be one of them, but I'm really, I'm not I will not cede my schedule to anybody else, but what. And, but I think I did struggle a little bit with when I left the winery, which was a full time job I was in the airstream.
So that occupied a lot of my time, but there was this notion of, what are you going to do for the rest of your life? But I've resolved that. And I think I'll write about the same. I'll be at that same level of productivity that I am right now, but I dabble in a variety. You and I've talked about this small businesses that I think matter.
I've done some venture capital in areas that are meaningful to me. Climate and healthcare. I am always looking for opportunities to do work. That's interesting to me. I'm helping a buddy in town with a brewery startup, a distillery. Didn't have to do that. I just find these opportunities to occupy myself and I don't get so hung up on having to leave some sort of a legacy.
It's just what I pursue, the things that make me curious right now. And the things that make me curious right now may or may not make me curious in a couple of years. I've got motorcycle trips planned. I might go back to the Airstream thing when I can't ride motorcycling. I've got these things laid out that will occupy me, but none of them are of the traditional.
I gotta go back and get a job, so I'm not bored all the time. I seem to find an endless number of things that are of interest to me. And I'm not really thinking out that I glance at it every now and again, 20 to 25 years, but my days seem pretty full and I just don't worry about it. I think I'll be in this house in St.
Augustine for the next two years. Where am I going to go after that? What's the next Airbnb going to be? And. And that's, in fact, I was out in Portland for the psychedelic experience and I thought how it is freeing knowing I could come up with Portland. I want to. Nothing's binding me to any particular place.
And these it's future thinking. Yes. But not 20 to 25 year future thinking. I don't have a 20 to 25 year plan. And that to me is way less overwhelming. It's just a loose structure for the next couple of years. And I think the thing I just occurred to me as I was saying that is there are elements in my life that are so controlled that it's, calcified my daily routine.
And then there are areas of my life that are so impulsive that it's it's 180 degrees from my calcified day. And I'd be at a loss to explain why except one is a reaction to the other.
Leafbox: It's just coming back to the animals. I just keep thinking of the coyote. Steve, how can people find you? What's the best way for them to read your essays and connect with you?
Steve: I would love more free subscribers on Substack. I have no intention of making any money on Substack. And I think you just have to type in my name which, Is Steven with a P H and Chamberlain C H A M B E R L I N. And do a search for a guy with a beard was my photo.
And I would also love anyone who subscribes to be open and free about commenting or criticizing or starting a conversation I'd like. Some more engagement on some stack for no other reason than I like to engage with people that way. And I'd like to know I'm helping people or what I could do better.
So sub stack is really the predominant location for me. And the easiest way to find me and DM me if you're a bit interested in that.
Leafbox: Great. And Steve, anything else you want to share?
Steve: Gratitude that you asked me to do this, Robert, I've always looked up to you and considered you a role model and a mentor and so appreciate.
And I'm honored that you felt it was something worth taking your time today to talk to me.
Leafbox: No, no, I really appreciate the like raw and honest writing that you're doing. And everyone's on a journey, so I appreciate your struggle.
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Microwave
It wasn’t deliberate, not really, the impulse instead had struck him, a microburst, waiting for the countdown.
The lunchroom buzzed, indifferent, as he opened the door to the cafeteria’s microwave and without a glance of the tattered paperback, placed it on glass carousel. The cover? Irrelevant.
Closing the door with a refreshing catch, a gift for someone next to find he thought as he walked away with his lunch to his friends.
Trailing through the clamor of voices and plastic trays to where his friends sat, slouched and half-lost in the day’s decay.
He threw his bag on the bench beside him, the weight sagging his shoulder. A bite of stale pasta between lazy banter, remnants of weekend bravado. They had tried to blow up a tennis ball stuffed full with match heads—unsuccessfully, throwing it against the wall again and again until finally one of them in frustration just lit the damn thing. The ball hissed, fizzled into a seething pool of neon green ash, and a plume of black.
Bell rang. Lunch dissipated into the folds of doors. Back to class. Statistics, one of the classes he enjoyed. The teacher, grey-bearded and ghostly, murmured like a dying machine, equations bleeding from his lips onto the board.
Michael thumbed through the buttons on his TI-82 calculator. Drug Wars. Cocaine was always the better hustle. But even that grew tired. A few days before, a girl had slid him a note during class, asking for help on a quiz. He helped, not for kindness but for the vague promise of future payment, however intangible.
Bell rang, class over.
He walked to his locker, gathering the familiar weight of his AP Chemistry books. The final B schedule loomed, and he could already smell the off sweet vinegar like lab. But before he could slip into his regular rhythm, a hand clamped down on his shoulder.
“Michael - I need you to come to my office.”
The voice belonged to the Vice Principal.
Tiny ogre of a woman in heels, short hair butch, a belly constrained in the pant grey suit, a squeezed figure of bureaucratic rot and middle age. He sighed, tugging at his own waistband as he followed her down the hall.
In her office, she sat across from him, shifting awkwardly in her seat. Her small hands clutched the paperback—that paperback.
“So Michael, tell me why you put this in the microwave.”
Um. The moment stretched. “I don’t know. I just thought it’d be funny.”
“Funny? Were you trying to start a fire?”
The absurdity jolted him, but only for a second. "What? No, it’s just a book. I don’t even think microwaves can set them on fire."
His mind wandered back to the weekend. The tennis ball. The disappointment of failed destruction. Then further back, to a summer prior when the morning after a sleep over, his two friends and him collected all the spray bottles full of cleaning supplies in the house, and with a lighters fashioned little flame throwers, burned old toys into goo. Laughing over the mess, coughing thru the fumes. Oven cleaner was the best they determined.
"With everything happening in the world right now, we need to be careful," the Vice Principal's voice intruded, pulling him back to the sterile present. "We need to understand why."
“Why what?”
He didn't care about the why. The why was always the problem, wasn’t it?
The night before the flame fueled fun, after dinner, retreating to his friend’s room to sleep, his two friends popped a video into the VCR. A borrowed relic of smut—crude and grainy, bodies flickering across the screen in imitation of an unknown life. His two friends started moving their hands under their respective blankets, They had laughed as he on the floor, recoiled. They were animals, degenerates, lost to urges he couldn’t—and didn’t want—to understand.
“F***s” he spat as left the room. They laughed more as he slammed the door, carried his sleeping bag into the living room downstairs.
No way. Tossing the bag on to the couch, he yelled back called them gay as he stomped. They weren’t either, just couldn’t help themselves they said.
The Vice Principal droned on. Something about concern. Something about safety. The book. The fire that could have been but wasn’t. She leaned forward, a parody of empathy. "We just don’t want anyone to get hurt, you understand?"
“But did … anyone get hurt?”
“No but—”
“Anyway I got to get class.” He started to pick up his bag, started to stand. F**k her he thought. He knew she knew the real threats walked the halls every day, unnoticed and unchecked. The mushroom dealers, the stoners, the chain smokers who lingered in the bathrooms, trading answers to exams like currency, the girls who cut. And yet, here she was, fixating on him. On a book in a microwave.
“Thanks Michael, let’s just try to think thru how people might take things, I know you are a good kid.”
She handed him a slip of paper. "Give this to your teacher. It’s an excuse for being late."
He took it without a word.
Just a few weeks ago, a pair of goth kids dressed in trench coats half the country away killed some jocks. International news. Panic about video games, Doom and Quake, Heavy Metal and Rap, everything was a threat now. People trying to understand. Searching for signs, for explanations, for scapegoats.
The school had cancelled an afternoon of classes for an all school meeting, the same ogre standing in front of the bleachers explaining and droning on. Asking if anyone had questions, or something to share. And all they could do was rearrange deck chairs on the sinking ship.
He walked through the empty halls, the vinegar like smell of the lab drawing him forward. Maybe today they’d finally throw lithium into water as Mr Allen always had promised.
Maybe today there would be fire.
// Zero Strike
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James Ellis, the author and host of the popular podcast Hermitix, takes us on a journey through his transformation from his enigmatic online presence as MetaNomad to his current philosophical and literary endeavors under the name James De Llis. In this conversation, we explore his evolution as a thinker and writer, discussing his recent short fiction collection, There’s a Man Crying in the Street (2024), and drawing connections to his earlier essays from Exiting Modernity (2021) and Only Ever Freedom (2022).
De Llis reflects on the shift from his earlier persona, MetaNomad, and the pivotal critique by fellow writer Darren Allen that sparked a profound realization about the nature of suffering. He delves into the impact of this insight on both his writing process and his broader philosophical outlook, offering a candid look at how these ideas shaped his recent works.
The conversation also navigates themes of happiness and contentment, contrasting fleeting pleasures with a more enduring state of being that sustains through both joy and suffering. Ellis shares personal anecdotes and practical exercises for cultivating this mindset, shedding light on how his own philosophy informs his writing.
Ellis also provides updates on his forthcoming book releases, reflects on fictional characters that have influenced him, and offers a deep dive into the creative process behind There’s a Man Crying in the Street and other stories. Throughout, he shares his evolving perspective on what it means to find true happiness and peace in an unpredictable modern world.
Selected Time Stamps from Interview
00:00 Trailer: The Nature of Suffering00:58 Evolution of Metanomad to Hermitix03:29 The Influence of Mark Fisher, Nick Land05:26 The Transition to Writing Under a Real Name06:50 Exploring his Recent Fiction09:15 Reflections on Happiness and Modernity16:35 The Story of 'Who's Walking Who?'21:56 The Irony of Modern Comfort29:08 Hyperstition and the Power of Fiction45:12 The Myth of Narcissus and Disenchantment48:11 The Push for Secularity and Political Trends51:53 Responsibility and Influence of Writing55:37 The Nature of Suffering and Misery01:00:48 Darren Allen, “Beauty of a Weed” Overcoming Misery01:09:41 Reflections on Happiness and Suffering01:14:28 Final Thoughts and Future Works01:14:48“Smile and Be” as a Hyperstition
James has a B.A. in Fine Art and an M.A. in Continental Philosophy.
Find his works, essays and more @
https://www.jdemeta.net/
James de Llis also hosts the Hermitix Podcast which he describes as:
“Hermitix is a podcast focusing on one-on-one interviews relating to fringe philosophy, obscure theory, weird lit, under appreciated thinkers and movements, and that which historically finds itself 'outside' the academic canon.”
https://hermitix.net/
Music Sample in Intro: Acediast / Malformed Canticle Of Despondent Languor
Full transcript @ leafbox.com
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I’ve been reading, listening to, and following Nick Currie, the Scottish artist, musician, and writer known as Momus, for over 20 years. As he prepares to release his new album, Ballyhoo, he graciously shared his time and thoughts in this extensive conversation.
We explore his artistic philosophy, the role of art in liberating the imagination, and his experiments in AI compositions and K-pop influences, finding AI to be both a tool and a challenge for contemporary songwriters.
He delves into his concept of 'elective affinities,' reflecting on his cosmopolitan lifestyle, upbringing, and the impact of various global cultures on his work. We also discuss the contemporary decline of the West, Currie's views on masculinity, the moral panic surrounding new technologies, and his retrospective critique of authenticity, freedom, and more. The conversation left me inspired to follow Momus and continue others to advocate for a fearless approach to creativity and the importance of embracing change and novelty in art.
Selected Time Stamps from Interview
00:00 The Essence of Art and Fiction01:09 Introduction to Momus: Nick Currie's Journey02:43 Exploring AI in Music Creation05:02 The Impact of AI on Songwriting08:08 Cultural Identity and Elective Affinities12:57 Global Perspectives and Personal History17:59 The Role of Moral Panic in Art and Technology22:18 Self-Censorship and Artistic Freedom29:14 Influences and Inspirations in Music34:09 The Schizoid Aesthetic and Autism34:46 Drugs and Mental Health35:44 Tao Lin and Autistic Identity37:28 Masculinity and Identity41:01 Cultural Decline and Fertility Issues43:06 The Evolution of Decades45:00 The Impact of the iPhone48:07 Spirituality and Intellectual Interests50:15 Love for Cities and Urban Life56:50 Fashion and Personal Style58:34 Future Projects and Reflections - In the Future We’ll License 15 AI versions of ourselves…
Nick Currie has been releasing music for nearly 40 years, books, countless websites, video lectures across new and old technologies.
For More Visit imomus.com
Song Sample from Ballyhoo : Plastic Seoul
Purchase the Ballyhoo Record
Photos, songs, videos, book covers etc all by Momus/Nick Currie
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Hawaii based photographer Wayne Levin reflects on his lifelong career while preparing for a retrospective collection of his journey from underwater photography to documenting the civil rights movement. Wayne shares experiences from his collaborations, notably with Tom Farber, highlighting significant projects such as documenting Hansen's disease communities in Kalaupapa Molokai and the spiritual importance and military impacts on the island of Kaho'olawe. Wayne reflects on his involvement in the civil rights movement and serving in the Navy in this interview.
Wayne explores themes like the boundary of air, water, and land in his projects and continues to delve into humanity's place within larger ecosystems. This expansive interview encapsulates Wayne's artistic evolution, his philosophical reflections on individualism, collaboration and his deep connection to Hawaii's natural landscapes.
There is something really magical about Wayne’s photographs, he captures an essence and spirituality of space/place. I hope you enjoy this conversation with this inspirational photographer.
“The artist’s intention is not exactly to reveal the world beneath the surface, but, rather, to deepen the mystery”
-Thomas Farber, from introduction of Through a Liquid Mirror
Kudos to Thomas Farber for connecting me to Wayne.
All Photography Copyright Wayne Levin
Music Sample from Martha Argerich Ravel Gaspard de la nuit I. Ondine
More @ Waynelevinimages.com
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I had the pleasure of speaking with , an Indian photographer and writer whose recent memoir “Journey to the East”, chronicles his 1800-kilometer walk through the heart of India, from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal.
Initially a project document the issues plaguing rural India, the project unfolded to become an unforgettable voyage of self-discovery. In this interview, Ashutosh reflects on human kindness, philosophical insights, religious perspectives, and societal issues he encountered during his travels. He talks about his background, the influence of Western philosophy, and his academic experiences in England and Scotland. Key themes include environmental degradation, farming crises, caste dynamics, and the impact of digitization on human connectivity. The dialogue also touches on the challenges faced by India under nationalistic pressures and the role of art, journalism and freedom of speech in highlighting these issues, his thoughts on spirituality and society. A story of universal human optimism and connection forged step by step, person to person.
Ashutosh's dialogue reveals both optimism for humanity's intrinsic kindness and concerns about societal trends driven by technology and politics. His upcoming projects and thoughts on cross-cultural learning cap a conversation that is both a personal narrative and a broader cultural critique.
00:00 Introduction to Philosophical Insights
02:33 Life in India: Family and Background
05:51 Journey to the West: Education and Experiences
10:02 Cultural Observations and Reflections
15:42 Philosophical and Religious Explorations
16:03 The Concept of Kali Yuga
21:31 Western Philosophers and Psychedelic Influence
26:19 The Walking Journey Across India
34:08 Living Arrangements and Language Barriers
34:47 Caste and Social Dynamics in Rural India
37:08 Safety Concerns and Gender Differences
38:35 Media and Press Relations
40:12 Philosophical Reflections and Book Summary
41:47 Optimism and Human Kindness
45:15 Religious Polarization and India’s Diminishing Press Freedom
49:28 The Fallacy of Western Freedom and COVID-19 Reflections
54:11 Photography and Social Documentation
59:00 Migration and Cultural Diversity
01:02:14 Upcoming Projects and Final Thoughts
The Book of Ptah
Journey to the East
www.ashutoshjoshi.in
Interview Transcript, More @
Leafbox.com
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Kit Ebersbach, a multifaceted musician and arranger, shares his extensive journey through Hawaii's vibrant music scene in this personal interview. Recorded in his Honolulu studio, Kit reflects on his 30-plus years at Pacific Music Productions.
I hope most of you will enjoy the interview. This is a free flowing conversation. Just let it wash over you like you are hanging out with Kit in the studio. Kit’s passion for Hawaii, music and creative curiosity is shared.
Kit began his musical journey in the jazz clubs and R&B groups of 1960s and 1970s Hawaii. His earliest recordings were with legends like Gordon Broad, Lemuria, and Babadu. In the following decade, Kit co-founded Hawaii’s first new wave band, The Squids, whose ethos of “best quality under the circumstances” resonated deeply with the youth of the time. They were passionate, tongue-in-cheek, and constantly searching for something different.
The 1980s saw Kit and his left-field collaborators Robert ÆOLUS Myers, Nelson Hiu, and Frank Orrall pushing the boundaries of music and performance art with the highly experimental group Gain Dangerous Visions. They experimented with performance art, technology, and improvisation to create truly mind-bending experiences.
In the 1990s, Kit teamed up with advertising executive Lloyd Kandell to recreate the sound of exotica with Don Tiki. This group was one of the first to reignite the world's fascination with the pseudo-Polynesian lounge music of the 1950s.
These days, Kit lends his talent to some of Hawaii’s greatest singers, including Starr Kalahiki and Teresa Bright. His approach as an arranger and accompanist is playfully calculated and carefully exacting, bringing out the best in every performance.
Kit discusses the evolution of Hawaii's music scene from pre-tourism days, its role as a Vietnam War R&R destination, and the diverse musical opportunities it provided. He reflects on the cultural humility required to thrive in Hawaii and the profound influence of Hawaiian culture and its resistance to external pressures, such as the proposed Mauna Kea telescope project.
Kit's dedication to both commercial and non-commercial music is evident in his field recordings and his experimental projects. He emphasizes authenticity and the joy of creating music for personal fulfillment rather than commercial success. His work with the Aloha Got Soul record label and ongoing exploration of sound highlight his continued passion and innovation in music.
Kit walks us through some recent songs and closes with some notes and personal reflections on the power of Hawaii, place and finding his creative inspiration in it.
Some highlights that I enjoyed:
On Finding Everything Interesting / On Being Authentic / On Finding Value
On the essence of mana / On the spirit of Hawaii
I hope most of you will enjoy the interview. This is a free flowing conversation. Just let it wash over you like you are hanging out with Kit in the studio.
Time Stamps
-
(00:00:00) Introduction - Opening Clip from Gene Artery
-
(00:04:00) Kit’s background: Growing up in New Jersey, moving to Hawaii
-
(00:06:00) Music scene in 1960s Hawaii and avoidance of the draft
-
(00:08:00) First experiences with psychedelics
-
(00:09:00) Balancing commercial and experimental music, formation of The Squids
-
(00:10:00) Involvement in the Renaissance of Hawaiian culture
-
(00:11:00) Realization of the need for humility in Hawaii
-
(00:12:00) Collaboration with Starr Kalahiki and cultural connection
-
(00:18:00) Early field recording experiences
-
(00:24:00) Collaboration with Hawaiian Airlines for in-flight music
-
(00:28:00) Thoughts on AI in music
-
(00:29:00) Advice for other musicians
-
(00:30:00) Reflection on other musicians’ talent
-
(00:31:00) Being humbled by music and life experiences
-
(00:33:00) Participatory nature of music performance
-
(00:35:00) Views on direct-to-fan relationships
-
(00:38:00) The enduring presence of Hawaiian culture
-
(00:44:00) Sharing recent compositions and projects
-
(00:47:00) Detailed discussion on recent album projects
-
(00:48:00) Description of specific projects and methodologies
-
(00:51:00) Philosophical thoughts on local identity and creation
-
(00:52:00) Insights into the spiritual aspects of living in Hawaii
-
(00:54:00) Kit's overall experience and the essence of living in Hawaii / “Beeg Mahalos”
Other Notes:
Gene Artery — opening song of the 2020 album Itchi Lee Presents the Dalai Lawnmower, Kit’s first covid-sequester musical endeavor. This, along with all subsequent album releases, was constructed entirely inside a digital-audio workstation, using software plugins and synthesizers, found internet audio material, and an archived collection of audio files which had aroused his interest in the past.
Other samples from
Kīpuka and Stopover(Closing Track) are from the album Buoy
More information @
Kit Ebersbach @ Aloha Got Soul
Kit Ebersbach Band Camp
Interview @ Leafbox.com
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This is my second interview with the writer Charles Hugh Smith.
For a deep dive into Charle’s past, bio, writing etc I recommend you take a listen to the October 2023 interview with Charles Hugh Smith.
For those familiar with his writing on self reliance, agency, ownership, authenticity and autonomy I hope you find this interview fruitful.
We explore Charles's recent perspectives on various topics: from the contrasting merits of cultivating 30 friendships versus building 30 bunkers, his advice on _going grey_. We delve into his astute analysis of the potential doom loops facing cities and perhaps the broader Western world, navigating censorship within a narrative-controlled environment, the dynamics of small, close-knit vs large open societies, his motivation for also writing fiction, and his ultimate message of uncovering authenticity in life.
Thanks for being here.
Time Stamps
01:15: On a 30 person network vs a 30 room bunker15:14: On The Doom Loop of Cities22:15 On Global Capital / Mobility / Civic Engagement28:48 On Migration / “Voting with your feet”31:50 Self Sufficiency vs Self Reliance36:52 On Going Grey40:25 On Being Anonymous / Surveillance Economy49:09 On Being Shadow Banned55:53 Post Truth65:12 Tight and Loose Cultures Spectrum73:53 On Writing Fiction80:52 Finding Authenticity in Life
Weblinks:
Twitter/X: @chsm1th
Web: OfTwoMinds.com
Substack:
Music Intro Sample: Accurst by Acediast
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit leafbox.substack.com
Dr Elmar Jung
Dr. Elmar Jung, a distinguished figure in the realm of holistic and biological dentistry. Dr. Jung, who is not only the founder of Dr. Elmar Jung Dental Clinic but also a naturopath, author, podcaster, and an international speaker, has dedicated nearly 35 years to advocating for an integrative holistic approach in dental practice since graduating from dental school.
We delve into the critical role of oral health as an integral component of overall wellness. Dr. Jung shares his cal unique perspective on holistic dentistry, including his critiques of traditional practices like amalgam fillings, root canals, orthodontics and more. The interview also goes into a discussion on views on fluoride use, the significance of dental and patient education, and the evolving dynamic between patients and healthcare providers.
Furthermore, Dr. Jung emphasizes the importance of diet, lifestyle, emotions, and breathing in maintaining not just oral health, but also its influence on our general health.
The interview concludes with a discussion on the future of holistic dentistry, particularly how patient education and self-awareness are pivotal in empowering individuals to take charge of their health.
Time Stamps
00:54 Growing Up in Germany, Dental Training04:31 Dental Education in West and East Germany and Lessons for Today06:39 Questioning Professors/Authority10:11 Holistic Dentistry vs. Traditional Dentistry13:05 On Oral Health Being Separated from Overall Health17:04 The Meridian Tooth Chart19:55 Discussion on Root Canals29:48 Discussion on Amalgam, Composite, and Other Fillings, Removal Issues39:35 His Relationship with Traditional Dentists42:35 Discussion on Patient-Doctor Relationships47:48 Discussion on Fluoride53:40 Discussion on Regulatory Capture/Industry Interests55:11 Conventional Orthodontists vs. Holistic Orthodontist Practices57:24 Breastfeeding and Oral Development01:04:50 Salivary Diagnostics/Oral Biome01:09:10 Oral Health Post-Covid/Pandemic Effects01:13:45 Remineralizing Teeth/Importance of Diet01:14:19 Breathing and Oral Health01:17:00 Diet/Lifestyle Recommendations01:19:17 Future of Holistic Dentistry01:27:51 The Role of Emotions in Oral Health01:32:00 How to Download Dr Jung’s Book / Closing Statements
More information: @ Dr-Elmar-Jung.com
Twitter: @elmarjung
Music Sample from 'Symmetry' | Denovali Records by Ricardo Donoso
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit leafbox.substack.com
Dr. Janet Hoskins is a professor of Anthropology and Religion at the University of Southern California. She has conducted extensive field research in Indonesia, Vietnam, and California. Dr. Hoskins holds an MA and PhD in anthropology from Harvard University, and a BA in anthropology from Pomona College.
Her current research interests include the emerging field of Transpacific Studies, post-colonial studies, transnational religions, visual anthropology and ethnography, material culture, theories of time and history, gender, exchange, and ritual.
We discuss her long career in anthropology, her fieldwork, her thoughts on anthropological pessimism vs. optimism, globalization vs. hybridization, the role of photography in visual anthropology, the anthropology of tourism, and ultimately what people can take away from the study of anthropology and more.
Time Stamps:
3:00 - Anthropological Optimism vs. Pessimism 7:32 - Biography8:38 - Field Work in Sumba / Romantic Ideals in Anthropology10:32 - Field Work like Returning to Childhood16:32 - What we can learn from Anthropology19:47 - Time Keeping Across Cultures23:23 - On Cultural Relativism 29:34 - On Ethnography / Visual Anthropology40:55 - On Hybridization vs Globalization 43:47 - How cultural anthropology affected her parenting50:04 - On the indigenous and the non-indigenous52:55 - On Cao Daoism - Discovering this new religion in Southern California1:01:00 - On Phoenix Boxes / Spirit Writing in Cao Dao / Religious Plurality 1:12:23 - On Being an American 1:14:45 - Connecting with Dr Janet Hoskins1:16:09 - PhD Students of Note 1:17:09 - Take Away Lessons
More information
Dr. Janet Hoskins @ USC
Headshot Credit: Janet Chauvet caveOther photos: Dr Janet Hoskins
Music Sample:MARAPU - WELCOME TO SUMBA Author: Feryanto Pekabanda (Yanto Marapu) & Arnaud MarianiComposition: Marapu Band
Headshot Credit: Janet Chauvet caveOther photos: Dr Janet Hoskins
Dr Hoskins in Sumba, Indonesia (1980)
Sumba Meat Distribution (1980)
Janet Syl Mis Tay Ninh (2005)
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is an imaginative writer from Oakland, California known for his intriguing work of speculative philosophy published on Substack as The Spouter.
Viewed through a Marxist lens, The Spouter presents an unconventional narrative on petroleum's role in shaping contemporary history.
Our discussion spans a range of captivating topics. We examine the historical significance of petroleum and Jed's efforts to ignite a revolutionary approach to climate discourse.
We navigate through the complex interplay between humanity and fossil fuels—oil, coal, and gas—analyzing them from various viewpoints: religious, materialistic, Marxist, speculative, and literary. This multifaceted exploration aims to challenge and transform the conventional narrative surrounding climate change.
We also wander into the realms of hyperstition and cybernetics, reflecting on the impact of analog technology, typewriters, and the role of speculative philosophy. We touch upon literary masterpieces like Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" and Reza Negarestani's "Cyclonopedia," among other intriguing subjects.
Jed encourages a spirit of open-minded inquiry. He argues that while you may not align with all his ideas, they serve as a catalyst for sparking new questions and fostering a more nuanced, complex perspective on history and current affairs.
Get “Noided” as The Spouter argues…
Intro Music Sample from Acediast / “Malformed Canticle of Despondent Langour”, Tristidigezh Records 2022.
Time Stamps
1:57 - Typewriters and analog technology 4:33 - Finding Inspiration in Cyclonopedia for the project The Spouter6:19 - Schizophrenia Reading and Cybernetics Role of Speculative Philosophy 11:41 - The Concept of Sentient Oil 15:30 - Capitalism and Other Hyperobjects 19:30 - Hyperstition 20:07 - The Global Warming Discourse23:47- Cybernetics, environmentalism and control/fragmentation of reality 34:04 - Communism as hyperobject40:24 - Sentient oil seen thru religious analysis - discussion on the Jinn50:24 - Discussion on return to religion in society 55:10 - How to regain humanism60:21 - Paranoid sensibility / Parapolitical sensibility - Getting “noided”61:55 - Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon 65:35 - On possession by the hyperobject68:14- Jed's book and where to find his writing 70:05 - Material Analysis in Understanding History
Further Reading / Notes from (The Spouter)
Cited and Recommended
Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials. Reza Negarestani, Re:Press 2008.
Knot of the Soul: Madness, Psychosis, Islam. Stefania Pandolfo, University of Chicago Press, 2018.
- Re: Jinn
Thirst for Annihilation: George Bataille and Virulent Nihilism. Nick Land, Routledge, 1992.
- Nick Land did coin the term “Hyperstition”, though probably not in this book. This one is probably the most relevant to our conversation.
Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia Volume 1. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Try to get the translation from University of Minnesota Press, 1983. (I haven’t read the Penguin translation.)
A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia Volume 2. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Minnesota, 1983
Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Timothy Morton, University of Minnesota Press, 2013.
The Ecological Thought. Timothy Morton, Harvard University Press, 2012.
- This was what I was reading when the phrase/slogan “Modernity is the process of oil getting into everything” arose – the text might not say exactly that, but this is where it is from, and I consider it foundational to my work.
Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis. Chris Williams, Haymarket Books, 2010
- Recommended. Much easier to parse than John Bellamy Foster’s ecological socialism.
The Closing Circle: Nature, Man & Technology. Barry Commoner, Random House 1971.
- An example of good/less compromised ecological writing of the type suppressed by the suspect texts listed below.
Cited and Argued With
The Progress of This Storm: Nature and Society in a Warming World. Andreas Malm, Verso, 2020.
Donella Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, William W. Behrens III. Universe Books, 1971.
Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. James Lovelock. Oxford University Press, 1979.
The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Earth. James Lovelock. Norton, 1988.
Books You Should Prioritize Reading
The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World. Vincent Bevins, PublicAffairs 2020.
- Highly recommended gateway drug to noided history.
Gravity’s Rainbow. Thomas Pynchon, 1973.
- I have to convince people to read it, since it’s a hard book; believe me when I tell you the effort will pay off. Lots of these “big” books like Ulysses and Moby Dick, maybe the effort isn’t worth it for some people. Gravity’s Rainbow is worth it for everyone. I know that people are busy and attention spans are short. But anyone who doesn’t read it really is missing out on something revelatory and very compelling.
Zionism in the Age of Dictators. Lenni Brenner, 1983.
-
Available online at Marxists.org
-
Worth reading for anyone who doesn’t understand how the settler colonial project of Israel came to be, because it points out something that people don’t want to talk about.
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Writing under the pseudonym, ARX-Han and using a voice modulator for this interview, this writer and novelist joins me to explore his debut work “Incel.”
"Incel" by ARX-Han is a darkly satirical and unsettling portrayal of a sexually frustrated American man's internal journey. The novel offers an unfiltered glimpse into his increasingly radical, obsessive, and destructive mindset. Praised for its technical prowess, linguistic versatility, and sharp cultural critique, it presents a timely and insightful examination of a disaffected segment of society.
A stirring exploration of masculinity, rage, nihilism, and the nuances of evolutionary biology, Han's work is a bold commentary on the complex matrix of contemporary young male psychology.
We explore in detail his creative approach to philosophical fiction, the constraints of modern publishing, and discuss his journey to authentically capture the raw and unfiltered facets of the contemporary experience.
The interview sheds light on how the digital age, notably the impact of the internet and social media, has significantly shaped the contemporary cultural evolution to a point of civilization decay. We also discuss AI, psychological operations, memetic defense and a slew of other interesting topics.
Han links his fascination with flawed characters and the poignant exploration of human suffering. ARX-Han ultimately lands on lessons in universality and we reach in this interview over laughs to a positive nexus on the human condition, love, and a rejection of nihilistic reductionism.
Time Stamps
2:43 The use of pen name ARX-Han and pseudonymity9:17 Biographical Points 12:25 On MFA Culture / Working with a Development Editor15:49 ARX-Han mindset writing “Incel”19:49 Anon, Young Men and disenchantment in scientific reductionism 24:19 Death of God31:19 What is an incel?36:31 Sources of Civilization Decay39:25 “Mansophere” and discussion on mimetic transmission45:05 Memetic Defense49:00 Tension in Writing52:38 Purity Tests and The Aesthetic Overton Window1:04:00 “Wordcels,” AI, Writing, Finding meaning in Creative Pursuits1:09:17 Pan-psychism / Spirituality / Things Getting Weird 1:18:00 Role of Aesthetics / Marketing / Manga Cover vs V2 Cover1:24:00 Publishing Gate Keepers / Morality linearly descended from Protestantism1:26:15 “Bro, just buy my book” - Humor and Hope - “Just Do it”
Note: AI Generated Transcript - Apologies for errors.
Follow Arx-Han:
DecentralizedFiction.com
Twitter.com/Arx_han
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While strolling along the Hudson River in New York City, Jason Trucco joins me to discuss his career in filmmaking, directing, art, design, and playwriting. In this insightful interview, Trucco opens up about his multifaceted career jumping between the avant garden and the commercial, including directing music videos for icons like Billy Idol, Macy Gray, Devo, and Queens of the Stone Age. Throughout his career he has used new technology in narrative story telling Trucco delves into the integration of AI and immersive technologies in his craft.
We delve deep into his ongoing projects, examining the pivotal role of collaboration, and discussing the crucial elements of passion, creativity, and the inspirational role of walking in his artistic pursuits.
Trucco discusses his creative approach, how he navigates his relationship with his inner critic, and explores the financial challenges of being an artist.
Emphasizing the importance of play, curiosity, and following one's interests in the creative process this interview is insightful for those interested in creative entrepreneurship and the lessons that be applied to other sectors.
Time Stamps
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03:40 - Jason’s Bio / Introduction
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06:09 - Making Music Videos
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10:14 - The Role of Technology in Narrative Story Telling
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11:12 - Theatre as Retraction from Technology?
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14:01 - Co-Directing Hi-Fi, Wi-Fi Sci-Fi
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19:01 - Technology and Formulaic / Regurgitation Storytelling
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20:58 - How Jason Approaches a Project
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23:40 - The Role of Guilty Pleasures
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24:58 - Where ideas come from…
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27:00 - The Importance of Collaboration
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30:10 - On walking and its importance
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32:19 - Six Sex Scenes in Spain / One Act Plays
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34:10 - The Role of The Inner Critic
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39:19 - Financial Challenges
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46:04 - Fear and “We only have these problems while we're alive”
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55:03 - Responsibility in Art Making / Discussion on Casting Narrative “Spells”
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57:49 - Making “Poetry” / Reverberating Experience with Others
Intro Music FeaturesCalifornia Stars Words by Woody GuthrieMusic by Jay Bennett & Jeff TweedyPerformed by Paula & Jason Band - On their cassette, New York Apartment Tapes
Full Transcript @ Leafbox.com
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Today I had the pleasure to speaking one of Australia's leading experts in tobacco control, Dr. Colin Mendelsohn. With over three decades of dedicated service in smoking cessation and tobacco harm reduction, Dr. Mendelsohn's expertise is both rare and invaluable. In our discussion, we delve into the complex world of public health, examining the often unnoticed echo chambers, the intricate web of incentives that shape government policies, and the impact of societal and governmental biases on public health decisions.
This episode is more than just a talk on tobacco control; it's a lens to try to understand the authoritative landscape of Australian and public health in general, exploring alternative approaches and addressing solutions on a global scale.
Our conversation culminates in a crucial discussion about the importance of being open to evidence in public health, particularly in tobacco and smoking control. Dr. Mendelsohn, with his focus on harm reduction, provides a unique perspective on this issue, advocating for the use of safer nicotine products like vaping and smokeless tobacco for those who struggle to quit smoking.
Whether you're a non-smoker intrigued by the complexities of public health or a smoker seeking safer alternatives, this episode promises to challenge some of your understanding of nicotine, tobacco and solutions in public health.
Disclaimer: No Tobacco Company / Product Conflict of Interest
Neither Dr. Colin Mendelsohn nor I have any affiliations with tobacco control products or companies. Our discussion was conducted independently, without any commercial interests or influence from tobacco companies. The purpose of this discourse was solely to explore and debate potential public health issues, free from any commercial bias or conflicts.
Time Stamps
03:14: Biographical And Career Overview06:14: Australian Tobacco Situational Overview11:00 Discussion on “demonization” of Tobacco Users/Smokers14:47 Uses cases for nicotine , understanding users 18:07: Ideological Issues + Biases in Australian Public Health22:23: Discussion on Australian Authoritarian / “Nanny State” Public Health 25:25 Nicotine Prescriptions + Taxes Effects / Black Market Forces 32:32 Harm Reduction Model for Nicotine / Tobacco Control36:08 Discussion on Vaping / Flavor Additives / Children’s Issues41:06 China / Smoking vs Vaping in China / India44:09 Smoking Cessation Tools48:08 Marijuna Vaping vs Smoking50:27: Discussion on Conflicts of Interests54:56 Maintaining Openness to Evidence / Avoiding ideological silos01:00:47 Discussion on Polarization / Disinformation / Information01:06:00: Closing Remarks: Importance of quitting smoking and exploring safer alternatives.
More Information:
Dr Mendelsohn’s “Farewell Retirement Letter” Referenced in Conversation
X / Twitter: @ColinMendelsohn
More Info @ https://colinmendelsohn.com.au/
Founding Chairman, Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association charity
Book: Stop Smoking Start Vaping
Transcription (AI Generated Transcript - please excuse any mistakes in transcription!)
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Today I had the pleasure of connecting with fellow surfer and ocean lover Thomas Farber. Thomas Farber is a master in capturing the essence of life’s intimate moments, condensing the most profound into beautiful profound vignettes.
Awarded Guggenheim and, three times, National Endowment fellowships for fiction and creative nonfiction, Thomas Farber has been a Fulbright Scholar, recipient of the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize, and Rockefeller Foundation scholar at Bellagio.
An Author of over 20 books of fiction and creative non fiction and has just published two new collections, Acting my Age and Penultimates.
Awarded Guggenheim and, three times, National Endowment fellowships for fiction and creative nonfiction, Thomas Farber has been a Fulbright Scholar, recipient of the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize, and Rockefeller Foundation scholar at Bellagio.
Thomas Farber's other recent books include Here and Gone, The End of My Wits, Brief Nudity and The Beholder. Former Visiting Distinguished Writer at the University of Hawai'i, he teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.
We connect today about his latest meditations on life, death, writing, the sea, women, Diamond Head and much more. All with humor, humility, gravitas, and wisdom, I’m grateful for his enduring lessons.
Time Stamps
(2:27) Wearing Black, Theatre Playing the “writer”(4:06) Publishing Acting by Age with Manoa Journal(9:33) Growing Older/ Acceptance / Being a Child of the 60s
(11:06) On Spirituality
(15:57 ) The Banayan Tree / Hāmākuapoko Ruins Maui
(17:57) First Trips to Hawaii 1971
(21:56) Collaboration with Wayne Levin
(27:40) On Sailboats / The Book Of Love
(30:18) On Minimalism, Scuba Gear, Surfboards
(32:04) Epigrams
(37:55) The 96 Year Old ‘Carrot’
(39:32) On his novel The Beholder, writing about physical love
(42:27) Doom Scrolling
(44:44) Advice to young writers
(46:32) Making Amends; New Projects
(52:00) Jean Cocteau and the importance of readers
More Info @ https://thomasfarber.org/
Excerpt: Ruins 1999 By Thomas Farber
Headshot Credit: Ugo Corte
Book Cover Photos: Wayne Levin
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Josh Mitteldorf, is a science writer, researcher in biology of aging, and poet, with a rebellious spirit and persistent curiosity. His interests span all the biggest topics in current affairs, as well as eternal questions of the human condition. Who is behind the pandemic and other assaults on humanity? Why do ETs look like us? Can the future reach back in time to cause the past? Are there transformative technologies, available to a select few that have been withheld from the public?
Dr Mitteldorf earned a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Pennsylvania. He has written a popular book and an academic book on the biology of aging. His websites include Aging Matters Blog, Experimental Frontiers, the Daily Inspiration, and Unauthorized Science. His forthcoming book includes a sonnet and graphic for each of the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching.
Dr Mitteldorf lives in Philadelphia, where he teaches a weekly yoga class and plays in chamber music groups and a community orchestra. His two daughters were adopted from China in the 1980s, breaking diplomatic ground for a wave of Chinese-American adoptions in the following decades.
The interview delves into both his biographical and psychological past, unveiling the complex and multifaceted life of Dr. Mitteldorf. He seamlessly blends science, spirituality, and a profound sense of social responsibility in his pursuit to enhance the human experience.
The episode concludes with a poem reflecting his belief in the interconnectedness of all beings. Listen for the threads that tie together the spiritual, scientific, and activist pursuits of this extraordinary individual.
Photo Credit: Josh Mitteldorf
Time Stamps
(01:40) Intro
(04:16) Connecting the Threads of Josh’s Work - Buying Freedom
(07:31) Graduate Studies Berkeley, Life in Taiwan and Return to the US
(13:38) Caloric Restriction and Interest in Evolution Biology
(20:28) Predator / Prey Model and Evolutionary Basis for Death
(23:35) Thoughts on Anti-Aging Communities and Options
(26:42) Transhumanist Movement / Materialist World Views/ Post Materialist Physics / Consciousness
(32:49) Spiritual Awakening / from Secular Jew to Quaker to Yoga
(37:55) Political Awakening / Work on Election Integrity 2004 / 9-11
(44:15) Confidence and Group Dynamics
(49:16) Eye Of the Storm / Collective Unconscious
(52:02) UAP / UFO Phenomenon / Unauthorized Science
(1:01:44) Poem: Intersubjective Bootstrap
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Craig Steely, an American architect based both in Hawaii and California shares his philosophy on life and design.
Craig's work stands out for its seamless integration of modern design with natural environments, creating spaces that are as stunning as they are sustainable. From his iconic Lavaflow homes in Hawaii to his urban homes in San Francisco, Craig's approach to architecture challenges conventional boundaries and invites us to reimagine our relationship with form, shape and our surroundings.
I had the pleasure of speaking in detail with Craig on the importance of respecting the land and the environment in his projects, the influence of his experiences in Hawaii and California, the importance of maintaining a small, focused team in his practice, and the value of being able to work on a variety of scales and types of projects. Steely also shares his thoughts on the current state of architecture education, and the importance of critical thinking and a deep understanding of the land and environment in architectural practice.
As an architecture enthusiast and developer the conversation is refreshing and invigorating for those interested in thoughtful design and approach to building.
Topic Time Stamps
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(3:31) On being an outsider in Hawaii and California
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(5:04) The D-Fin House / Relationship to clients
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(7:41) Approach to land and geography
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(11:23) Escaping design echo chambers / democratic design
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(14:22) Getting lost in the power of form and shape
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(18:22) On building the same house over and over
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(21:22) On surfing and its influence
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(24:07) Architecture and parenting
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(27:07) On scale of architecture practice
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(31:28) On the value of architecture education as creative problem discipline
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(37:28) On architecture in Hawaii
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(40:00) Relationship to the large scale / thoughts on urban planning
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(47:20) On compromise in design
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(48:14) On letting going of fears
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(52:00) On the value of feral projects
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(54:14) Conversation Pits and architecture tools
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(57:34) On the future and new projects in Mexico
Learn more about his practice @ Craig Steely Architecture
Photos: Darren Bradley / Craig Steely Architecture
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Keturah Lamb, an American writer, educator, and community builder, discusses her unconventional upbringing, her philosophy, her projects, and her views on technology and society. Raised in a family that rejected social security cards for four generations, Lamb was homeschooled and grew up in various locations across the US. She has hosted workshops through her project, the Living Room Academy, to pass on traditional knowledge and skills regarding home building, community building and more. She also shares her experiences of traveling and meeting different communities, her approach to using the internet, and her thoughts on politics and spirituality. She emphasizes the importance of community building, hospitality, and sacrifice in her life and work.
Topic Time Stamps
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(4:31) Keturah’s upbringing and unconventional lifestyle
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(9:31) Views on religion and her current spiritual practices
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(14:02) Ketura's approach to aesthetics and her Living Room Academy project
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(19:31) Demographics and a Response to Ketura's work and projects
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(28:55) Rumspringa
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(33:10) Travel and the 12 Tribes
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(35:12) Church jumping
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(37:14) Relationship to Internet and Social Media
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(45:02)Writing practice and community building
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(47:03) Keturah’s Politics
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(51:51) Dating advice for others
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(53:58) Spiritual framework and her views on gossip
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(56:12) Gossip
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(59:02) Current focus and future projects
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(1:04) The role of sacrifice / closing thoughts
Connect with her work:
The Living Room Academy Projecthttps://www.livingroomacademy.com/
She writes
- On Point Whimsical Fiction And Essays
The Girl Who Does Not ExistGuide to life without a Social Security Numberhttps://thegirlwhodoesntexist.com/
Find her on Twitter: @KeturahAbigail
Interview Transcript @ Leafbox.com
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Dr. Shoji Nakayama, active in Japanese medical and public health research, delves into his extensive career centered around environmental health and public safety.
Dr Nakayama is currently serving as the deputy director of Japan's Environmental Children's Health Study (JECS), involving over 100,000 participants, Dr. Nakayama advocates for transformative approaches in public health – focusing on altering environments rather than solely individual behaviors. He is passionate about interdisciplinary approach to biomonitoring, exposome research and improving public health.
We overview his career, his passion for public health, his exciting career in post disaster public health research, his groundbreaking research on forever chemicals substances and emerging contaminants.
His vision extends to advocating for multidisciplinary methods in biomonitoring and exposome research, recognizing the complex interplay of factors affecting public health.
Topics Covered with Time Stamps
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(0:40) Dr. Nakayama’s transformative journey from clinical medicine to public health advocacy
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(7:47) His pioneering research on the implications of forever chemicals and emerging contaminants
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(13:15) Research in fluorinated and experience at US EPA
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(26:28) Insights in Regulation , EU vs US vs JP
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(27:44) Lessons learned from disaster response following the 2011 earthquake in Japan
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(35:47) The importance of Disaster Response Research
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(39:25) Insights from the monumental Japan Environmental Children's Health Study
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(44:30) The expansive realm of exposome research and its practical applications
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(46:54) Collaborative approaches in public health and the hurdles in research funding and policy formulation
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(49:14) Discussion on Environmental Effects at a Population Level vs Individual Level
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(55:16) Urbanization, green spaces, and their health implications
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(57:35) Navigating public health challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan
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(59:00) Debates and developments around HPV vaccination in Japan
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(1:00) Dr. Nakayama’s source for his enduring commitment and passion for advancing public health.
Japan's Environmental Children's Health Study
Elsevier Profile: Shoji F. Nakayama, MD, PhD
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Randal O'Toole, an American policy analyst, discusses his maverick career, non consensus views on urban planning, transportation, and housing in this interview.
O'Toole runs the Thoreau Institute as well as the popular policy blog, The Antiplanner. He has written several books and hundreds of policy papers from a free market perspective on urban planning, government policy, housing, rail and other related land use topics. We explore his belief that urban planners often impose their preferences on the public, such as imposing restrictive land use planning codes to “force” people to live in apartments and use public transit, even though most people prefer single-family homes and driving. O'Toole also shares the impact of the pandemic on urban planning, reinforcing existing trends such as people moving to the suburbs and working from home. We discuss the potential of autonomous vehicles in replacing public transit in the future as well as his views on cycling.
In this interview, O’Toole critiques the idea of planning itself and promotes the repeal of federal and state planning laws and the closure of state and local planning departments. He explores in detail why planning fails, through documentation of planning disasters, while giving context of his perspective on land use issues in Hawaii such as cycling, light rail, affording housing, and agricultural lands as well as providing solutions for environmental protection and stewardship.
Topics / Time Stamps
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(2:08) On Biking in Oahu
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(12:33) Educational Background and Current Work
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(16:05) Economics vs Planning
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(20:31) The Iconoclastic Mindset
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(24:25) Buses vs Light Rail
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(26:55) Criticism of the Honolulu Light Rail System
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(33:47) On New Urbanism
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(43:45) Urban Planning and the Pandemic
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(46:16) Solutions to non utilized urban cores / skyscrapers
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(49:06) The Iron Triangle
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(51:30) Autonomous vehicles as an alternative
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(54:07) Houston as Model
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(59:18) Incentive-based conservation
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(1:04) The Grassroot Institute
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(1:06) Hawaii Land Use Reforms Recommendations
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(1:12) Vacancy Taxes as Symptom
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(1:15) On Optimism
-
(1:17) Policy Briefs
The Antiplanner: https://ti.org/antiplanner/
Policy Briefs: https://ti.org/antiplanner/?page_id=16274
The Education of an Iconoclast: https://ti.org/antiplanner/?page_id=16272
Leafbox:
Today I had the pleasure of speaking and learning from Randal O'Toole. He's an American policy analyst. He's written several books, hundreds of policy papers, and he provides solutions from a free market perspective to various problems. He runs a popular blog called The Antiplanner, and he's featured in several debates on urbanism, environmentalism, government policy. But today I was curious about exploring his biography and discussing his memoir, the Education of an Iconoclast. We discussed his shift from forestry to economics, his 50 year career, his thoughts on light rail and other transportation, housing solutions, bus, Hawaii, top down urban planning, Houston as a model for development and other topics. I hope you enjoy. Thanks for listening.
Leafbox:
Hi, good afternoon, Randal.
Randal O'Toole:
Can you hear me?
Leafbox:
Now I can. Perfect. Thank you for your punctuality and for rearranging the meeting. I know you're a busy man.
Randal O'Toole:
Great.
Leafbox:
Well, Randal, I just thank you so much for your time. I've been reading your blog on and off for years and this morning I was biking. I live in Oahu, so I think that's important visual wise.
Randal O'Toole:
Oh, I hate biking in Oahu. It is so awful.
Leafbox:
I bike every day about 10, 12 miles to drop off my daughter back and forth. I was listening to some of your debates you've had with people, mainly James Kunstler and obviously I love biking. I wanted to start with biking. There are many debates you have online about the pros and cons of government planning and light rail, but I really wanted to start with your relationship with cycling and how that influenced your political evolution because I read most of your excellent biography and memoirs and I just wanted to understand how that cycling framework has influenced your analysis of cities and urban planning and design and everything.
Randal O'Toole:
Well, it's funny. One of the very first transportation issues I got involved in, it wasn't the first, but it was early. It was about 1975. I was invited to attend meetings of the bicycle advisory committee for the city of Portland. And I was an ardent cyclist. I didn't even have a driver's license at the time and I worked in downtown Portland and I lived in the east side, which if you know Portland means you have to cross the river. And Portland has, I think 11 bridges now. Only nine of them are open to vehicles and only seven of them are open to bicycles. And the lanes tended to be pretty narrow and there was a lot of on and off ramps on some of those bridges. So I went to the advisory committee and I said, you need to put some curb cuts to make it easy for bicycles to use the sidewalks so that they aren't blocking your narrow lanes.
A couple of the bridges, the lanes were only like 12 feet wide and there was no ability to pass because there were structures on both sides of the lanes. And so if you were bicycling, it was kind of scary to have cars pass you in this narrow lane if you were in the lane. Now there was a sidewalk, but you couldn't get up to the sidewalk without stopping and getting off your bike and lifting the bike onto the sidewalk and so on. So I said, put in curb cuts. And the city said, oh, we can't do that. It would be too dangerous when the bicycles come off, the cars wouldn't expect it. And they'd hit the bicyclists and two years later they put in all the curb cuts and all the places I recommended. So I stopped going to those advisory committee meetings, but they ended up doing what I recommended.
Now it wasn't because I had recommended it, it was because that was the logical place to put it. Since then, I occasionally participated in bicycle proposals, but today what I'm seeing is that the bicycle community has been captured by the anti automobile community. Even though at the time I didn't have a driver's license, I wasn't anti automobile, I was a follower of John Forrester. John Forrester wrote a book called, what was it called? Anyway, he argued that bicycles were vehicles by law, they were treated as vehicles and so they should act like vehicles. They should assert themselves when they were in very narrow lanes and make sure that cars knew they were there, occupy the whole lane if necessary, but usually they should try to be a part of the flow of traffic and not expect any special lanes or anything like that. In fact, he argued that bicycle lanes actually made traffic more dangerous.
What's happened since then is that we've had movements, pro bicycle movements that have made bicycle list feel like they are superior to other vehicles in traffic. There was a movement called critical mass where hundreds or thousands of bicyclists would go at rush hour one day a week and occupy some entire streets that were vital streets for people getting home and disrupt traffic as much as possible. And the bicyclists who were attending these critical mass events were told You were superior, cars are inferior, you should have the right of way over cars at all times. And what we saw happen was bicyclists then would go away from these critical mass meetings and be convinced that they were superior and they would insist on occupying right away and asserting right away when they didn't actually have it and they would get hit more frequently. And we've seen an increase in bicycle fatalities in recent years.
And I think that's partly because critical mass has warped the perspective of bicyclists. And so we've had cities adopt plans that they claim are to make streets safer. They call them vision zero plan. And these vision zero plans often call for taking a four lane street, in other words, a major collector street that's moving a lot of traffic and take away one of the lanes from the automobiles and make it into bike lanes. So you'd have a 12 foot lane turned into two six foot lanes, one for bicyclists going one way and one for bicyclists going the other way. That leaves three lanes. One of the lanes would be used for left turns and the other two lanes would be for traffic in two different directions. Now that kind of project is designed to safeguard bicyclists from being hit from behind by cars. Well, on average, about 3% of bicycle fatalities consist of people being hit from behind by cars.
Now I'm a cyclist. I know you're always nervous about getting hit from behind, but the cars see you, they know you're there, and so they watch out. They don't want to hit you any more than you want to be hit by them. So only 3% of fatalities are being hit by cars from behind. Half of all fatalities take place at intersections where the bike lanes disappear. So we're safeguarding against a very rare event and not doing anything about the kind of event that is responsible for half of all bicycle fatalities by putting in the bike lanes, we're sending a message to bicyclists that it's safe to ride on this busy street. So we get an increase in bicyclists riding on these busy streets, which means you're get an increase in bicyclists crossing busy intersections and getting hit. So we're making bicycling more dangerous by creating an illusion of bicycle safety that isn't real.
I would've done something completely different. I would've taken local streets that are parallel to those busy streets and turned them into bicycle boulevards, which means you remove as many stop signs as you can so that you can have through bicycle traffic with minimal stops, but put in a few little concrete barriers to discourage cars from using those streets as through street. So you now have streets that are open to cars for local traffic and open to bicycles for through traffic. And I've used bicycle boulevards in Berkeley and Portland and other streets and they feel a lot safer. They are a lot safer and they don't cause the imposition on cars. It happens when you take lanes away from cars. So that's my attitudes towards cycling, which is that bicycles are vehicles, cars are vehicles. One should not be superior to the other. In certain situations, cars have the right of way and other situations, bicycles have the right of way. The safest thing we can do is separate them when we can by putting bicycles on bicycle boulevards instead of by asserting that bicycles are safe, by putting them into bike lanes when actually we're making it more dangerous.
Leafbox:
So Randal, you mentioned that you don't like biking in Oahu. What specifically do you not like about biking here?
Randal O'Toole:
Well, you've got a lot of busy streets. Their lanes are narrow. There's often not bike lanes where you do have bike lanes. They have strangely put two-way traffic in one bike lane. And so you have a risk of hitting other bicyclists, but you also have the risk that not only do you have bicyclists going with the flow of traffic, you have bicyclists going in the opposite flow from traffic. And so you're compounding the risk of not just having the risk of getting hit from behind, but having the risk of a head on collision. And I don't see that as particularly safe. I've bicycled, the last time I got hit by a truck was when I was bicycling in Maui on a bike lane and the truck was turning left into a driveway. I was bicycling at about 20 miles an hour. There was a lot of traffic and the truck didn't see me before it turned and I didn't see it until the last second and got hit by this truck. So again, it's another situation where bike lanes do not increase safety. It would've been better if there had been a local bicycle boulevard and I think you could probably put some bicycle boulevards in Oahu, but they haven't done that. Instead. Mostly bicycles are then for themselves and there are those few bike lanes downtown, which I didn't find particularly well designed.
Leafbox:
Randal, I should have asked first, but for people who aren't familiar with your work, I'm a fan of Antiplanner, but how do you describe yourself? What's a quick summary of your actual work and education and framework?
Randal O'Toole:
Well, the funny thing is my training is as a forester and I spent the first 20 years of my career as a forest policy analyst. I was analyzing government plans, Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management plans for mainly public lands, but also in some cases for private lands. That analysis carried over. I discovered that, well, what happened was is I was challenging the federal timber sale levels. They were selling a lot of timber, losing money at most of it, doing a lot of environmental damage. And in a nutshell:, we won federal timber sale levels declined by 85% between 1990 and 2000, and it was a great deal of that was due to my work. Part of it was due to the spotted owl, which I didn't really work on, but most of it was due to my work, which persuaded the forest service, that they were cutting too much timber and that they shouldn't be doing so much.
And so now having won that battle, I looked around for other battles to fight and came across battles that were going on with land use and transportation in the city I lived in, which was the Portland urban area. And extended that to found out that I was dealing with a movement that was a national movement that was trying to force people to stop driving, trying to force more people to live in apartments instead of single family homes. And since 98% of the travel we do in cities is driving, and since 80% of Americans want to live in single family homes, it seems to me that even though I was a bicyclist, I have to realize that most people don't bicycle. Most people drive. And even though I have lived in apartments, I have to realize that most people want to live in single family homes.
So I shouldn't be imposing my preferences on other people through some kind of planning process. So I began to challenge city plans, urban area plans, state plans, transportation plans, land use plans, and I discovered that there's a lot of similarities between forest planning and urban planning. Basically, forest planners think that there's these inanimate objects out in forest that they can make, do whatever they want. I actually found a forest plan that proposed they were going to grow trees to be 650 feet tall when the tallest trees in the world are less than 400 feet tall. Forest planners just thought they could imagine anything they want and it would happen. And urban planners think that there's these inanimate objects in cities that they can make, do whatever they want. And those inanimate objects are people and they think that, well, they can just force more people to live in apartments. They can just force more people to take transit or to bicycle instead of drive. And to me, those are very unappealing ideas and whether you're libertarian or not, you don't really like to think that somebody is trying to manipulate you to force you to use a much more expensive way of transportation or to live in a much less desirable home. That also happens to be more expensive than the single family home you might be living in. Now,
Leafbox:
When did that shift, I think in your memoirs, you started taking economics classes or was it when you were learning first computer modeling, when did that shift come in understanding reality versus imposed reality?
Randal O'Toole:
The funny thing was that when I was working on forest issues, I was making quite a name for myself. One Forest Service official told a reporter that Randal O'Toole has had more impact on the forest service than all the environmental groups combined. And so I would get speaking invitations and a professor at the University of Oregon Department of Urban Planning asked me to come and speak to his class, and I did at the time, I had a bachelor's degree in forestry and he said, you should go to graduate school, you should go to graduate school in our urban and regional planning department. And I said, well, I'm not really interested in urban planning. I'm interested in forest issues. He said, well, we also do regional planning, so they offered me funding support and things like that. So I said, okay, so I took the first terms worth of courses in urban planning and I looked around and I said, I shouldn't just take courses in one field.
I should also learn some other fields. And there was a course in urban economics, it was also a graduate course, and what I discovered was the urban economists didn't make any assumptions about cities. Instead, they looked at the data and then they tried to build for how the city works, they compared the model against the data and if the model didn't produce the data that they knew was real, they modified the model and then they compared that against the data and they kept modifying it until they got a model that came out pretty close to how the cities actually were working. So then they were able to ask questions of the model like what happens if you draw an urban growth boundary around the city and force the density of the city to get higher force higher densities, force more people to live in apartments instead of single family homes?
Will that result in more congestion or less? Well, the model clearly showed that although some people would respond to density by taking transit, most people would keep driving and the congestion would just get worse. Because you have more people driving per square mile of land because you'd have higher population densities? Well, in the urban planning courses, they asked the same question, and instead of building a model or looking at any data at all, they just said, well, I think if they were higher density people would ride transit more and so there'd be less congestion. And everybody in the class agreed. There were two urban planning professors in this class and they agreed and I said, no, the actual economic data show that the congestion would get worse. We went back and forth and finally one of the professors said, well, everybody's entitled to their opinion.
And that was the day I knew I wasn't going to become a planner, I was going to become an economist. So I stopped taking urban planning courses and I started taking economics courses and took a whole slew of those courses and still spent most of my time working on forest issues. And so I ended up not earning any degrees, but I think more like an economist than a planner. In fact, I think more like an economist than a forester. Foresters have a way of thinking. Geographers have a way of thinking. Landscape architects have a way of thinking. Economists and planners have ways of thinking, and I think like an economist. And so sometimes I'll call myself an economist even though I don't have a degree in economics. Sometimes I call myself a policy analyst even though I don't have a degree in policy analysis. My degree is in forestry. All of these things are alike in the sense that these planners and basically what I've spent my career doing is critiquing government plans. These planners think that they can impose things on the land or impose things on people that people don't want to have imposed on them.
Leafbox:
Going back to where does that iconoclastic mindset emerge from? I'm curious and how do you keep defending it? Why don't you go with the flow of the consensus?
Randal O'Toole:
Well, it's funny, I've always been an iconoclast. I grew my hair down well below my shoulders when I was in high school, which made the high schools vice principals hate me. I would leave school to go to anti-Vietnam protest marches or civil rights protest marches. I would skip school to go to environmental events and eventually started an environmental group in my high school when Earth Day came along that persuaded me that I should work on environmental issues. So I went to a forestry school where they taught people how to grow trees so they could cut them down and cut them up into forest products. And here I was not being real obvious about it, but being somewhat obvious because I was spending my summers doing internships, working on how to stop the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management and other agencies from cutting down trees.
And so I was always out of step and that seems to have continued throughout my career. One interesting example lately has been bus rapid transit. I spent a lot of the last 30 years of my career critiquing urban transit systems and we'd see cities like Portland and Seattle spending billions of dollars on rail transit and Honolulu now spending billions of dollars on rail transit and I'd say, wait a minute, bus rapid transit can move more people faster, faster to more destinations than rail transit. So instead of rail transit, we should be looking at bus rapid transit, and now we're seeing cities say, okay, we'll do bus rapid transit, but we won't do the kind of bus rapid transit Randal O'Toole was talking about, which was running buses on ordinary city streets. But the buses only stop once per mile like a rail line, and so they're faster.
They don't have to stop as frequently and they'll be more attractive to passengers both because they're faster and they're more frequent. Instead of just doing that, we're going to build special lanes for the buses. We're going to build fancy stops for all the buses, fancy stations for all the buses to stop at. And so instead of spending a million dollars a mile on bus rapid transit, we're going to spend $50 million a mile or a hundred million dollars a mile on bus rapid transit. We're going to make bus rapid transit as expensive as building rail transit. Well, I've lost interest in that, and so I'm now no longer enthusiastic behind bus rapid transit. Instead, the kind of transit I've been advocating is express buses, nonstop buses throughout urban areas that will take people from lots of origins to lots of different destinations with intervening 20 miles an hour, which is the average speed for bus rapid transit or 11 miles an hour, which is the average speed for local buses. They'll go at 50 miles or 55 miles an hour because they'll be going on freeways for most of their routes. Nobody else in the transit industry is thinking about this. So I guess I'm ahead of my time. I was talking about bus rapid transit before they were, and now I'm talking about express buses before anybody else. We'll see if they follow.
Leafbox:
Randal. These are like the buses, the Bolt bus in Los Angeles or San Francisco or the Chinatown buses in New York to Boston or DC or those type of private industry buses.
Randal O'Toole:
Those are intercity buses. And the interesting thing about the intercity bus industry is it used to be tied down by bus stations. You'd have these expensive bus stations in every city and they'd have baggage clerks and they'd have ticket salesmen and stuff like that. And the kind of buses you're mentioning, they've abandoned all that. They go from curbside to curbside, which means they don't have to pay for a station. They let the passengers load their own luggage, which means they don't have to pay for baggage handlers. You buy your tickets on the internet, which means they don't have to pay for ticket agents.
And that led to a huge resurgence in inter city buses. intercity buses buses were on the decline for about 1960 to 2005, and you started seeing these infrastructure light buses, megabus and bolt bus and so on, and suddenly bus ridership, intercity buses bus ridership is increasing. So we look at the transit industry and instead of saying, let's see, we've got this great infrastructure out there, it's called roads and streets. Let's run our transit on roads and streets. Instead of saying that, they're saying, let's build a lot of infrastructure that's dedicated solely to urban transit, and it's going to be really expensive infrastructure. We can build a lane mile of road for half a million dollars, but we're going to spend a hundred million dollars building a mile of rail or $200 million. There are some rail projects now that are costing $500 million per mile of rail.
That's a billion dollars a route mile because we have a mile of rail going in each direction. So we're spending phenomenal amounts of money for something that's only going to be used by a few transit riders because transit only carries half a percent of all passenger travel in this country. Before the pandemic, it was 1%, but now it's down to about a half a percent. Maybe it'll get us way back up to three-fourths of a percent. We're spending billions and billions of dollars on this tiny percentage of travelers with buses. We could attract the same number of people, move the same number of people, probably more people for a lot less money because the buses can go faster. Even New York City subways average less than 30 miles an hour, and buses on freeways can average 60 miles an hour.
Leafbox:
So Randal here in Hawaii about the new HART (Light Rail), I'd love to just a quick summary of your critiques of that system and why you think it was built.
Randal O'Toole:
Well, of course, when they first planned it, they said it was going to cost less than 3 billion. And in fact, the original proponents said that fares were going to pay not only all the operating costs, but they were going to pay part if not all of the capital costs. Well, the costs have exploded to well over $9 billion. The Federal Transit Administration thinks that by the time they're done, it's going to be $12 billion and they've run out of money. So they're saying we're not going to be able to finish it all the way immediately. Eventually we might get enough money to be able to finish it, but not right away. And the ridership numbers they were projecting were probably way too high. Certainly they're not getting anything close to what they were expecting with the part that's opened. That's partly because it's not finished and you look at it and all it really is a bus route.
They could have done exactly the same thing with buses. They could have gone just as fast if not faster with buses. They persuaded people to go for it. They said it's going to relieve congestion. Well, it's not going to relieve congestion. In fact, their own data show the congestion is going to increase near the transit stops because people were going to be slowing down and stopping there to pick up and drop off rail riders instead of people walking to the rail stations that were going to drive to the rail stations and have somebody drive them and drop them off. So their own data showed it was going to increase congestion, but they convinced people it was going to reduce congestion. And the onion had a great story many years ago saying 98% of American commuters want other people to ride transit so that they can drive in less congested traffic.
So transit agencies in Honolulu, in Los Angeles and San Diego and cities all over the country had convinced people to go for these extremely expensive transit projects by claiming that it was going to reduce congestion when in fact, on almost every case, it made congestion worse. And we made these critiques of the Honolulu Rail project before they began, before it began, the city council ignored us. They were heavily pressured by the unions that wanted jobs for constructing it. When the construction is done, there aren't going to be any jobs. The transit is automated, there aren't going to be jobs for drivers, there's going to be some maintenance jobs. There's going to be a tiny fraction, the jobs that they're getting for building. And so it was just basically unions and contractors wanted to build it. They threw money into the right campaign funds, and so politicians supported it.
So we end up seeing, and we're seeing us all over the country, we're seeing it for high speed rail, we're seeing it for Amtrak. We're seeing this what's called the iron triangle, which is people who make money from tax dollars in one corner of the triangle, the bureaucracy that another corner of the triangle and the politicians at a third corner of the triangle, the politicians appropriate money to the bureaucracy, which then give it out to the contractors who spend it and then who then take some of that money and use it for campaign contributions to the politicians. Very hard to break that triangle. We have found that if a measure goes on the ballot and we can spend 10% as much money as a proponent spend, we can usually reach enough voters to convince 'em to vote it down. But if we only reach five, only spend 5% as much as the proponent spend, it usually passes because they drown us out with their claims that it's going to relieve congestion and is education.
It's convincing people to be skeptical of government. We've got this huge movement now that's skeptical of capitalism and they don't realize that a lot of government is really crony capitalism where people take money from government to build up their companies. You've got companies that exclusively live off of government spending, and you see this in transportation. We've got all these engineering and consulting firms like Parsons Brinkerhoff, which has now got a new name WSR and HDR and a bunch of other companies, and they overtly lie. HDR has made a specialty of going to cities and saying, if you build rail transit, you're going to get billions of dollars of economic development. Look what happened in Portland. They built a light rail line and they got a billion dollars of economic development. They don't mention the fact that Portland got zero economic development after it built the light rail.
So 10 years after it opened the line, it threw a billion dollars in subsidies to developers along the light rail line, and those developers then put in new developments and they said, look, we built the light rail line. We've got all this new development. Well, you didn't mention the billion dollars in subsidies: where you didn't put in the subsidies, you got no new development, or you did put in the subsidies and you didn't have light rail, you got new development. It was the subsidies, not the light rail that got new development. HDR lies to people and claims it's the rail transit that got the new development. They even hired a city counselor in Portland, the person who had originally proposed these subsidies, and he traveled around the country telling cities that they put in the rail lines and they got all this development. He never mentioned the subsidies that he himself had initiated on the Portland City Council.
So you need to educate people and we need a skeptical public. We need people in the public who aren't going to automatically assume that government is good and that private operations, private companies are automatically bad. Private corporations aren't necessarily purely good, but given a choice between a public agency and a private corporation, I would rather have the private corporation because I can at least decide not to patronize that company if I don't like their products or what they do. Whereas when the government does something, I'm stuck with having to pay taxes for it whether I like it or not.
Leafbox:
What are your thoughts on New Urbanism? I think you've had debates with James Kunstler and have any of your thoughts changed or evolved or
Randal O'Toole:
Yes, they've evolved. I originally didn't like it and now I hate it. I originally thought new urbanism was a little misguided. Now I think they're delusional. Totally delusional. New urbanism is the idea that people will be happier if they live within walking distance of shops, of coffee shops, of stores of transit stops, maybe even within walking distance of work that people will be healthier if they're within walking distance. The way to do that is to build a lot more apartments because that's the way to get the density you need to get people living within walking distance. And so new urbanism effectively supported the urban planners who are trying to have urban growth boundaries around cities and densify the cities and increase the apartments. And if you look at the history of new urbanism, it basically came in the 1990s from a group of architects and planners who read a book that was published in about 1960 called The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
The book was written by an architecture critic at the time named Jane Jacobs. She lived in Greenwich Village, New York City at the time, the urban planning profession believed that high density apartments were bad. Most of the big cities like New York and Chicago and Boston had a bunch of apartments that had been built before the turn of the 20th century. They were like four and five and six stories tall. They didn't have any elevators. You had to climb up all these staircases if you lived on an upper floor to get to your apartment. At the time they were built, elevators had just been invented or they hadn't even been invented yet. High speed electric elevators dated to 1891. So a lot of these were built before the elevators. They were built for people who couldn't afford to ride a street car to work. And so you had blocks of apartments that had like 5,000 people living per block, and they were within walking distance of blocks of factories that had like 3000, 4,000 people per block of factories.
So people would walk, from the apartment for the factory. Well, after the turn of the 20th century, we got Henry Ford developed the moving assembly line for automobiles, and he made automobiles so cheap that everybody who was living in those apartments could afford to buy them. And the moving assembly line required so much land that all the factories moved out of downtowns into the suburbs. So the jobs moved to the suburbs, the people who bought cars that a lot of them moved to the suburbs, they could live in single family home instead of apartments. And after World War ii, we could see those apartments were not very desirable. And so in 1949, Congress passed a law that gave the cities money for urban renewal that was to be used to clear these apartments out and replaced them with something else. Well, the cities didn't want to replace 'em with single family homes because they didn't think they'd get as much tax revenue for the single family homes.
So for the most part, the cities were replacing them with high rise apartments with elevators. In the 1930s, there was a crazy architect from Switzerland who called himself Le Corbusier , which I think means the crow, and he thought that everybody should live in high rise apartment. I don't know why he thought that, because he himself never lived in a high rise apartment. He lived in low-rise, but he thought cities should build highrise apartments. So the urban planning fad of the 1950s was to build high-rise apartments, not just in American cities, but all over the world. You go to South Korea and the cities, all of them have high rise apartments. You go to Japan, you go to China, you go to Russia, you go to Paris, you go to cities everywhere you find all these high-rise apartments. They were all inspired by this kooky architect named Lake Buer who thought people should live in a way that he himself didn't want to live.
So here comes Jane Jacobs. They want to tear down her apartment building and put in a high-rise, and she says, urban planners don't understand how cities work. Well, she was right about that. Urban planners don't understand how cities, but then she went on to say something that was totally wrong, which was that she, Jane Jacobs understood how cities work, and the way she described an ideal city was you had five story apartment building and with all this density, the ground floor would be shops and people would entertain their guests out on the street. She didn't say this apartments were so small, there was no room for entertaining guests. So you'd entertain the guests out on the streets, so you'd have people playing out on the streets, they'd be barbecuing out on the streets, they'd be shopping out on the streets because the shops are out on the streets, so there wouldn't be any crime because everybody would be able to see everything that was going on because they'd all be down on the streets all the time.
You'd have these lively streets, it'd be so exciting to live in them. It'd be a wonderful place to live. And that's what a real city was like. She didn't understand that what she was describing was an artifact from the 1880s that people were moving out of as rapidly as they could and that, despite her claims, they did have high crime rate. The people didn't want to live in buildings, so they had to climb up to five stories, four, four or five stories on stairs to get to their apartments that they're moving out. She herself didn't live in a five story building. She lived in a three story building. I don't know if she lived on the second floor or the third floor. I suspect her apartment was probably on both floors because she was welted due. Her husband had a good job, she got a good job.
They lived in this three story building. There was a shop on the ground floor and they had to walk up, I think one floor to get to the main part of their apartment. So she didn't understand what it was like having to walk up three, four, and five flights of stairs to get to apartments on the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors. Doubly ironic, in 1968, her son decides to dodge the draft because he didn't believe in the war in Vietnam. So he moved to Canada. She decided to move to Canada with him, and she made so much money selling her book, the Death and Life of Great American Cities that she bought a single family home in Canada. She didn't live in a mid-rise apartment, and she moved to a single family home. And yet the urban planners who were young in the 1960s and becoming dominant in the 1990s who had read her book said, yes, we were wrong to try to force people to live in high rise apartments.
We should instead try to force people to live in five story apartments like the apartments that she described in the Death and Life of Great American Cities, like the apartments in Greenwich Village. So instead of saying, alright, let's build some of these five story apartments in the inner cities in Portland and Denver and Seattle, they said, let's build these five story apartments everywhere. Let's build them in the suburbs. Let's build them in rural areas. Let's build 'em everywhere. All urbanites should live in these five story apartment buildings. And so we're seeing them spring up all over the place. Most of them are subsidized because as I say, 80% of Americans want to live in single family homes, not in apartments.
We even had an urban planner write a paper that was very popular in the urban planning profession that said by the year 2025, and he wrote this in about 2002 or something. By the year 2025, people aren't going to want to live in single family homes anymore, and we're going to have a surplus of 22 million single family homes in the suburbs. The suburbs are going to turn into slums because everybody living in those suburbs are going to have moved into apartments in downtown. And so what urban planners should do today is get ahead of the situation by getting their cities to build more apartments, building more apartments in the suburbs, replace these icky single family homes that people won't want to live in so that we won't have a shortage of apartments when people want them. Well, of course, we're two years away from 2025. We have people moving away from cities as fast as they can before the pandemic where there were polls that showed that 40% of people who were living in dense cities wanted to move to suburbs or rural areas. And we had the same polls showed that more people wanted to live in suburbs that actually lived in them, and that was in 2018. And then the pandemic comes along and people just flee these dense cities, the populations of San Francisco and New York and others, Portland and Seattle, they're all declining and the populations of their suburbs, some cases are growing the populations of small towns. Boise, Idaho is the fastest growing city in the country.
The guy was just totally wrong. And yet we have suffered for two decades under urban planners who have tried to force these ideas on cities by subsidizing, by taxing people, and then subsidizing these high density apartments that people don't really want to live in.
Leafbox:
Randal, talking about the pandemic, how has that changed or affected your outlook on urban planning or on where people want to live? Or do you have the same critiques of the subsidies of suburban living or
Randal O'Toole:
All the pandemic has done is reinforced the ideas I already had. A pandemic doesn't really change things. What it does is it reinforces trends that are already happening. We already had a trend where people were buying cars and stopping the use of transit. Transit ridership declined every year from 2014 to 2018. It recovered slightly in 2019, but not much. Most cities still declined. About 45% of our transit takes place in New York City. And what happened was it grew in New York City in 2019. It's still declined almost everywhere else, but the growth in New York City overcame the decline everywhere else, but basically people were still buying cars. Gas prices dropped in 2014 and that just killed transit everywhere except New York City.
And then we have the trend to living in suburbs. We have the trend of wanting to live in single family homes as soon as people could afford to do so. They would buy a car and then they could live out in the suburbs where they didn't have to be in a lot of congestion or they didn't have to deal with crime or they didn't have to deal with pollution and things like that. And all the pandemic did is it reinforced all those things before the pandemic. You might've thought everybody who wanted to move to the suburbs had already done, but no, it turns out a lot more people wanted to move to the suburbs, but by the pandemic allowed more people to work at home and that led more people to say, okay, now I can move to the suburbs. Or before I couldn't because I was required to work in an office that was too far away from the place I wanted to live in the suburbs. So we now have people who maybe work in an office one day a week, but live a hundred miles away from that office and instead of driving 20 miles five days a week, they're driving a hundred miles one day a week each way and living far, far away from the density that urban planners had made for them.
The pandemic didn't change my views, it just reinforced them.
Leafbox:
What is your solution for the urban cores that are the skyscrapers of New York and the developers that built up that infrastructure? What are they supposed to do with these remote work is a challenge for 'em?
Randal O'Toole:
I think the government shouldn't do anything. I think the developers are going to have to figure it out for themselves. The owners are going to have to figure out for themselves what to do with those offices. Solution number one is to find lower valued tenants. They have what they call Class A offices and class B offices and class A offices attract companies like Chase Manhattan and Wells Fargo and Class B attracts lower rung companies. Then you have Class C that attracts nonprofit groups and flea markets and antique stores and things like that. So the owners of these office buildings are going to have to accept a lower class of tenants. Now you hear proposals to convert office buildings to apartments, and I think the Biden administration just approved a bill that's going to offer money to developers to convert office buildings to apartments. The problem is you look at the way plumbing is set up in an apartment building, every single apartment has to have plumbing for kitchen and bathrooms.
And you look at the way plumbing is set up in an office building, they put the plumbing in this core of the building where the restrooms are and the outer reach of the building have no plumbing at all. So it's going to be very expensive to change office buildings into apartment buildings. And really it's cheaper to build single family homes than it is to build apartments, and it's probably cheaper to build single family homes than it is to convert offices to apartment buildings. If you didn't have urban growth boundaries around cities, you're not going to convert offices to apartments because people aren't going to be willing to pay that extra cost of living in an apartment. If you live in a place that does have urban growth boundaries, you've driven up the cost of single family homes to be two to five times greater than it ought to be, then maybe you'll be able to justify converting offices to apartments economically justify. But that's only because you've distorted the housing market totally rid of those distortions.
Leafbox:
Like you said, it's still the triangle, the iron triangle, because the developers are getting subsidies for their losses instead of just taking the loss and finding Class C tenants.
Randal O'Toole:
Well, that's going to happen in some places, but even with the subsidies, I don't think you're going to see a lot of apartment conversions in Houston or Dallas or Atlanta or Omaha or Raleigh, places where you don't have urban growth boundaries. And so housing is still pretty affordable. Single family housing is still pretty affordable. The new urbanists like to ask people, would you rather live in an apartment where you're within walking distance of coffee shops and grocery stores and your work? Or would you rather live in a single family home or you have to drive everywhere you go? Everywhere you go. And a lot of people will say the apartment, but if you ask a question honestly, you'd say, would you rather live in a 1000 square foot apartment that costs $400,000 that's within walking distance of a limited selection, high priced grocery store and a coffee shop?
Or would you rather live in a 2000 square foot single family home on a large lot that's with an easy driving distance of multiple grocery stores that are competing hard for your business, both on and on having a wide selection of goods to sell you. And there's not much congestion because you live in a low density area. Well, you asked a question that way. You mentioned that your 2000 square foot house only costs $200,000, whereas to 1000 square foot apartment costs $400,000, even without the cost, you're going to find a lot more people saying they want the single family home. And when you add in the cost, the preference for single family homes just zoomed upward. So in Houston, you're not going to see a lot of conversions. You'll probably see a bunch of conversions in San Francisco, but do people really want to live that way? I think people are being forced to live that way, and I don't like the fact that planners are getting away with forcing people to live in ways they don't want to live. What
Leafbox:
Are your thoughts? I think you're a proponent of autonomous vehicles as an alternative to public infrastructure and public transport. Could you expand on that?
Randal O'Toole:
Well, I'm not so much a proponent, as I see that's the wave of the future. So we see cities like Seattle spending gobs of money. I mean, Seattle's got spending like 90 billion on light rail when autonomous vehicles, once they're applied to Seattle are going to be just destroy light rail as a mode of transportation. Who's going to want to ride light rail when you're going to be susceptible to diseases that you can catch from other people on the train? There's going to be crime on the train, and it only goes when the rail is scheduled, not when you want to go, and it only goes where that we've spent billions of dollars building the rail lines and not where you want to go. Whereas you could call up an autonomous vehicle, have it come to your door, take you to your door, and it's going to cost you probably not much more, maybe even less than when you count all the subsidies.
It's certainly going to cost less than the light rail. So it's going to happen. I mean, it's happened in San Francisco. Waymo has just announced that they're serving the entire Phoenix metropolitan area now just 550 square miles. Cruise is shut down in San Francisco temporarily in response to calls because there was one accident. But the data show that even as primitive as it is today, we've the autonomous vehicles that have traveled millions and millions of miles have only had about one fifth as many accidents per million miles. They travel as human-driven vehicles. The pressure is coming from the taxi drivers, the truck drivers, the people whose jobs are going to be lost when they're replaced by autonomous vehicle, and they're the ones who are putting pressure in California to try kill autonomous vehicles in San Francisco. But it's going to happen. And since it is going to happen, we shouldn't be spending money on these 19th century forms of rail transportation that are slow and expensive and don't go where people want to go.
Leafbox:
Talking about international frameworks, you travel, you went to Switzerland and you're going to Canada and you're a fan of rail. Where can Americans learn? Who's doing planning, right? Who's letting, is it Singapore, is it Tokyo? Where's the most ideal framework for development in your opinion, meeting the needs of this civilian, the government, and just where do you find that balance?
Randal O'Toole:
Houston. Houston is the closest I can come to the ideal. Houston has no zoning. Texas counties are not allowed to zone. And so Houston is surrounded by lots, some suburban cities that are incorporated. The biggest one is Pasadena. They don't have any zoning. Other Incorporated cities around Houston do have zoning, but what happens is the developments take place in unincorporated areas. The developers build houses that people want. They build homes for the market. They do build some multifamily, but they build mostly single family. And then these developed areas then get annexed into the suburbs and the suburbs then sometimes apply zoning. Sugar land is one example of that. Almost all of sugar land was built in unincorporated areas and then annexed into the city. Even the city hall was built when it was unincorporated, and then they annexed it into the incorporated area. So the zoning only came after it was built.
And so the developers were able to build the kind of houses that people wanted. And one of the things that developers found is that if you're going to buy a single family home, you want to have some assurance that nobody's going to put in a gravel pit or a meat packing factory or a brick factory or something like that right next door to you. And so the developers did something that was like zoning. They put protective covenants on the properties. They said All the homes in this neighborhood have to be a certain size. All the homes in this neighborhood have to be a certain size or whatever, and the lots have to be a certain size and so on. And what happens is when you do that, if you're a developer, you don't get more money from your lots, but they sell a lot faster.
It doesn't increase the cost. There's no cost of putting these covenants on, but they sell a lot faster. These covenants are actually developed decades before zoning, and they were so successful that zoning was invented by cities to apply to existing single family neighborhoods to increase home ownership. Home ownership rates went from about 15% in cities in 1890 to over 50% by 1960, because people had the assurance that if they bought a home, it wasn't going to be degraded in use because the next door neighbor decided to put in something that was incompatible, whether it was zoning or protective covenants. So Houston has protective covenants in all these suburban developments, and these covenants are flexible. If a developer says, look, your neighborhood has these covenants in and they're incompatible with the development I want to put in, but I think my development will sell really well, I'll pay you to change your covenants.
And some neighborhoods have agreed to do that so that the developers can put in something that they think is more marketable than the kind of housing that's in that neighborhood and people's taste change. So these kinds of things do happen over time. Now, another thing that's happened is that some of the suburban counties around Houston have toll road authorities, and they are funded exclusively out of their tolls. They build roads rather economically. They build freeways that are cost about $5 million a lane mile, and they build these freeways to get from the suburban communities that are being built by developers who are using protective covenants to get from these suburban neighborhoods to downtown Houston. So Fort Bend County, for example, has several freeways that is built exclusively with toll roads that are paid for solely out of tolls. They don't get any gas taxes, they don't get any tax dollars, and I consider these to be very successful.
Now nobody is perfect. Houston. After voting down light rail a couple of times, they managed to persuade them that voters that if they built light rail, it would relieve congestion. And so they ended up building some light rail lines That to me, have been total disasters. Transit ridership in Houston was growing before they started building a light rail is now lower than it was in the last couple of years before light rail opened. Because they spent so much money on the light rail, they ended up cutting back on their bus service and you lost more bus riders than you gained rail riders. That's a pattern we've seen in Los Angeles and St. Louis and Sacramento and cities all over the country that you build rail and you lose riders because you end up having fewer bus riders than you gain rail riders. But overall, despite that quirk, the light rail problem in Houston, I say Houston is the place you should go to if you want to find out how cities could work without a lot of government plans
Leafbox:
As an environmentalist, you have a model called Incentive-based conservation. Could you just summarize that for people and how you think market reactions can help secure environmental rights and whatnot?
Randal O'Toole:
Well, I developed those ideas back when I was working on forest issues and the Forest Service and other agencies were doing a lot of clearcutting that clear cutting damaged wildlife habitat. It reduced recreation values because recreationists to the most valuable recreation was recreation in areas that were wild and where you had some solitude from other people and from big cities and from roads and things like that. And so the forest service is eagerly building roads, cutting down trees, damaging watersheds, damaging fisheries, damaging wildlife habitats. The best fisheries in Oregon, for example, are an area that have no roads, that have had no logging, the best salmon fisheries. So I looked at after years of looking at Forest service data, something hit me one day, and that was that the reason why the Forest Service was doing this is because Congress had inadvertently designed their budget to reward the Forest Service for losing money on environmentally destructive activities and to literally penalize the forest Service for either making money or doing environmentally benign activities, activities that were not bad for the environment.
And certainly they didn't reward them for doing environmentally good activities. And so the Forest Service was merely following its incentive. I wrote a whole book about this. It was called Reforming the Forest Service. It came out in 1988. In 1989, the Forest Service sold 11 billion Ford feet of timber started declining in 1990. By 2001, it had fallen to one and a half billion board feet of timber. It had fallen by 85%. And people in the Forest Service came to me and said, we read your book and we thought you were accusing us of being corrupt. And then this guy said, the guy told me, I suddenly realized last week I had signed off on a timber sale so I could get a bigger budget. And they stopped doing that. They stopped saying, they said, we don't want to be motivated by our budget to do these bad things anymore.
And so they stop these environmentally destructive timber sale. I didn't think that was going to happen. I thought we would have to change their incentives. So I talked about incentive-based conservation. I said, we should charge recreation fees. We should charge fees, bigger fees for fishing and hunting. Right now, when you fish and hunt, technically under federal law or under US law, the animals you fish and hunt are owned by the states. But if you, on national forest, the land you're hunting on is owned by the federal government. So right now you pay a hunting fee to the state, but you don't pay anything to the federal government. I said, you should also have to pay a fee to the federal government to hunt on federal land or fish on federal land. If you did that, I pointed out then private landowners would also be able to charge fees, and you'd see both federal and private landowners modifying their activities so that they would enhance wildlife habitat, enhance fisheries, and enhance recreation opportunities.
We'd have more recreation, not less if we were willing to pay fees. And so my solution to the forest problems was to charge recreation fees to balance the fees from timber cutting and grazing and mining. And the forest services own numbers showed that recreation was worth more than all the other activities combined. So they would make a pretty good balance. I got quite a few environmentalists supporting this. But then in the mid 1990s, the environmental movement kind of got taken over by people who believed in top down planning, they believed that the president should make all the decisions for every single timber sale. And if a timber sale didn't meet their approval, they literally went to the president of the United States and got him to call up the district, not him, but one of his age, to call up the district ranger and say, don't do that timber sale. It drove the Forest Service bureaucracy nuts because these people in the administration in the White House were overruling 'em. And so incentive-based conservation didn't get very far. Now we're seeing some people in the environmental movement going back and recognizing that this top down planning doesn't work very well, and they're beginning to look at these ideas again.
Leafbox:
Randal, as you had that interview with the Grassroots Initiative here in Hawaii discussing housing policy, what's your relationship with them? And my other question is, do you have an opinion on vacancy taxes for Hawaii or other places?
Randal O'Toole:
Alright, well, you're talking about the Grassroot Institute, not plural, but Grassroot Institute, and they're a state-based think tank in Hawaii. And I work with state-based think tanks all over the country. Recently, I've done work for state-based think tanks in North Carolina, Arizona, Oregon, Colorado, a lot of different states and Hawaii. And some of them have hired me to do some work. Some of them just asked me to comment in Zoom meetings or in podcasts or radio interviews or whatever. But the Grassroots Institute is one of a great network state-based think tanks that I'm happy to be working with and for as much as I can. Even when I worked for the Cato Institute, which is a national think tank in Washington dc, I really saw my job as being a liaison from Cato to these state-based think tanks because most people in Cato working on national or international issues, I was one of the few in Cato who was working on local issues like housing or transportation issues. And so I've always had a good relationship with the Grassroot Institute. The director and their staff are great people and they do good work on housing and a lot of other issues in Hawaii.
Leafbox:
And then what are your thoughts? I mean, you advocated for a voucher model, just to summarize that for meeting affordable housing and then if you have any thoughts on vacancy taxes. Many people want to apply vacancy tax in Hawaii for empty units or empty second homes or I'm just curious if you've studied that at all.
Randal O'Toole:
Well, Hawaii was the first state in the country to try to restrict the development of single family homes. And it's such an irony because in the 1950s, most of the land in Hawaii was owned by the five companies, Dole and so on, and the bishop estate. And if you wanted to own your own home in Hawaii, often you couldn't find land to own it on something like 99% of the land was owned by one of these six entities. So you would have to lease land from one of these entities and build your home on it. And the five companies were agricultural companies and they weren't interested in leasing land for homes. They wanted to grow pineapple and sugarcane and other crops on their land. And so you had this huge housing crisis in Hawaii in the late 1950s. And at the time, in the early 1950s, Hawaii's legislature, territorial legislature was run by Republicans and they were very sympathetic to the five companies, and they weren't sympathetic to the people who needed housing.
Well, the late 1950s, the Democrats took over and they took over on a promise of land reform. They promised that they would force the five companies and the bishop estate perhaps to sell some of their land to use for housing so that people could find affordable housing. Well, the Democrats won and in 1961 they passed their land reform cap package and it did exactly the opposite of what they promised. Instead of requiring the companies to sell the land, they declared all the rural land in the state, most of which was owned by these five companies. They declared that land off limits to developments. They said the only land you could develop was urban land. This story is told by a great book called Land and Power in Hawaii. I recommended to all your listeners if they're from Hawaii. And what the Democrats discovered was that as legislators, they could make exceptions for themselves.
And so if you're a developer and you wanted to develop some land, you went to a state legislator and you made that legislator a partner in your development, the partner would then get the state to override the rules that had been passed by the state in response to the law you passed so that you could have your land developed or your developer partners land development developed and you'd make all this money. And so it became quite a corrupt system, and that's a system that governs Hawaii. To this day, only about 14% of the land in Hawaii has been developed. There's lots of land even in Oahu. Most of the land is still undeveloped. It's rural land that could be developed. And the real irony is supposedly the 1961 law that reserved all these rural areas where supposed to protect the agricultural industry, and yet the farm industry has practically died in Hawaii.
Why? Because the farmers can't afford to hire farm laborers and pay them enough money for those laborers to find housing and still produce pineapple and sugarcane and other produce that's competitive with farms in Costa Rica and Fuji and other places that haven't restricted housing. And so we've destroyed more than 80% of the farm industry in Hawaii just since 1982. It's been 80%. So since 1961, it's been more than 80%. In order to preserve the farmlands, we had to destroy the farms. That to me is a very sad commentary on what's happened in housing. Now, since housing has gotten expensive, we've come up with all these wacko ideas to make housing that's affordable. One wacko idea is build high density housing, build more apartments. Well, it turns out apartments cost twice as much per square foot to build as single family homes, maybe more than twice as much if it's really tall, partly because you have to put in elevators.
If you're building taller than two or three stores, you have to put in elevators. They're really expensive, more steel, more concrete. It just makes housing a lot more expensive. So you're not building affordable housing when you build apartments. And yet we have all these subsidies that we're throwing at developers that are inefficiently building expensive housing, but it's subsidized housing. And so then they can rent it at lower rates. Then we come up with crazy ideas like, oh, Airbnb is using up all the housing. Well, if we didn't have these restrictions on housing, we could build more housing. There'd be enough housing for Airbnb, there'd be enough housing for vacation homes, and there'd be enough housing for year-round residents. It's only because of the land use law that restrict housing, restrict new development that's made housing expensive. So the number one priority of anybody who cares about affordable housing should be to abolish the state land use laws, not just modify them to increase the amount of urban land, but totally abolish them. We'd see a lot more development on Oahu. We'd see a tiny bit more development on the other islands. Not much. Most of the land that's rural and the other islands would stay rural. At least half the land on Oahu that's rural would stay rural. Probably half of Oahu would stay rural, but there'd be a lot more development and housing would get to be a lot more important.
Leafbox:
And then what are your thoughts on the vacancy taxes that people want to implement?
Randal O'Toole:
Again, you're attacking the wrong problem. You're attacking a symptom, not the real problem. The problem is the land use law. And when you attack symptoms, you're not solving problems. It's like building affordable housing. Affordable housing is subsidized housing for low income people. Housing affordability, afford is a measure of how much housing costs for everybody. Housing shouldn't cost more than 30% of your income, but housing in Hawaii especially Oahu, is costing a lot of people 50% or more of their income. So that means instead of fixing the problem, we're spending more and more money tax dollars subsidizing affordable housing because so many more people are spending more than 30% of their incomes on housing.
Stop dealing with the symptom and start dealing with the problems. If you want to solve the problems, if all you want to do is look good, if you're a politician and you want to look good, then you deal with symptoms. And that's one of the problems with our economy is we've made governments so big, we've made the economy so complicated that people don't realize that the solutions that politicians come up with are only dealing with symptoms because it's easier for them to deal with the symptoms than it is to deal with the problems themselves. So many interest groups that benefit from creating problems. One of the beneficiaries from creating the housing affordability crisis are the developers who make money from the subsidy. So we've got this huge affordable housing industrial complex that gets money from taxpayers to build expensive housing that they then rent out at subsidized rates. And the developers make contributions to the politicians who appropriate the money for these funds. And Hawaii probably has a dozen different affordable housing funds. I know Portland has a dozen different affordable housing funds that are federal, state, and local funds that are all used to subsidize these developments that are really not affordable. The developers are making money from them, and a few people are getting to live in cheaper housing because of them.
Leafbox:
And then Randal, my last question is what are you optimistic about right now? You have a lot of critiques of government and incentives, but I'm curious what you're optimistic about.
Randal O'Toole:
It's hard to be optimistic today when you live in a country where one party thinks that they have unlimited purse strings and they can spend as much as they want on anything they want. And the other party is mainly oriented towards a socially conservative agenda that focuses on restricting people's personal rights as much as they can. And the middle of the road, which is let's have freedom of personal rights, and let's also have economic freedom where we're not taxing people to death and not restricting how people can use land and so on and so forth. That to me is a middle of the road position, and yet people aren't talking about that anymore. They used to be, if I'm optimistic about anything, it's maybe that the leader of one party will get convicted and the leader of the other party will become so senile that he won't run for office anymore.
Leafbox:
And then Randal, how can people find you? What's the best way for people who want more? Your policy briefs are very insightful…
Randal O'Toole:
Well, my blog is called the Antiplanner. Just Google Antiplanner or use DuckDuckGo or whatever your preference is to find the Antiplanner. I'm the first thing on the list. Technically it's ti.org. TI is the Thoreau Institute I started many years ago, Henry David Thoreau believed in wildness is the preservation of the world, and that government is best. It governs lease. So to me, Thoreau is the ideal combination of environmental and small government values. And so ti.org is my organization.
Leafbox:
Great. Randal, I'll give you the last word. Anything else you wanted to share?
Randal O'Toole:
Well, you mentioned the policy briefs, if you go to ti.org/Antiplanner, I post almost every weekday. But if you go up to the upper right hand corner, it says special features and one of them is policy briefs. I've got 150 policy briefs. They're average about four pages long on all kinds of different issues, wildfire housing, transit, highways, and so on and so forth. You also find the education of an iconoclast, which is my memoirs of 50 years of work in these fields. And then you can also find up on the menus above. There's Cato Institute, Thoreau Institute, an American Dream Coalition. I've written papers for all these organizations. I think I've written five or six papers for the Thoreau Institute just this year alone. So you can see all my latest papers. Those papers tend to be about 10,000 words long, whereas the policy briefs are only a couple thousand words long and are a good introduction to all these issues. There's at least one policy brief on the Honolulu rail, by the way.
Leafbox:
Great. Well, Randal, I really appreciate your time notes as well. Great. Thank you.
Learn more about @ ti.org/antiplanner
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit leafbox.substack.com
Robert Jefferson is an American broadcast news anchor and Air Force veteran, professor of journalism and has had the majority of his career working in Japan.
Jefferson shares an overview of his career and biography, while offering his views on the decline of journalism and the West. He offers advice for those considering life abroad and emphasizes the importance of staying curious, questioning authority, and learning history to navigate the current media landscape. Jefferson also shares his personal health journey and the benefits of gardening and maintaining a healthy lifestyle in this insightful interview.
Connect with The Kamakura Gardener
Support The Kamakura Gardener : patreon.com/TheKamakuraGardener
Subject Time Stamps:
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(01:26) The Mid-Atlantic Broadcast Accent and Biography
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(03:25) The Dark Side of Paradise
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(07:25) Relationship to Social Media
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(09:25) Work at NHK World TV…
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(15:58) An Interest in the Foreign
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(20:24) Moving to Japan
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(27:19) A Decline in Japanese Media
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(34:48) Being a Free Man in Japan
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(45:07) The Kamakura Gardener / Catharsis
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(57:05) Teaching at Temple University
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(1:02) Critique of being labeled a conspiracy theorist and the importance of seeking truth
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(1:09) Finding Opportunities Abroad
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(1:15) Closure and Where to Connect
Leafbox:
Today I had the pleasure of speaking and learning from Robert Jefferson. Robert is an American 47 year broadcast news anchor, and Air Force veteran. He's a professor of journalism and has had the majority of his career working in Japan. Aside from his broadcast duties, he has a smaller, intimate project known as the Kamakura Gardener. Today we explore his biography, his disenchantment with corporate media, truth finding and sense-making, and his eventual catharsis in finding local content, connecting community to the gardens and surroundings of Kamakura Japan. He shares his experience finding freedom in Japan and offers an analysis of the decline of journalism and of the West. We talk about his brief stint in Hawaii and the mainland, and offer an option for those considering life abroad and paths for finding opportunity. Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoy. That's one of my first questions. I think my mom, she introduced me to your videos and I think she fell in love with your voice. You definitely have a beautiful broadcaster voice. Where did you actually grow up in the States?
Robert Jefferson:
I was born in Philadelphia, but I grew up in Montgomery County, which is about an hour north of Philadelphia. And I have what's called a Mid-Atlantic Broadcast accent. I was in broadcasting in the military. That was my job information broadcast specialist. I was a TV news announcer in the Air Force. I was lucky. I insisted. I had an FCC license when I joined. I had been studying up to that point, actually. They tried to make me an inventory management specialist, and I said, hell no. Hell no. And I prevailed, and it didn't take long, just a week or so, and I was sent to a technical school, the Defense Information School of Journalism Public Affairs. I know Honolulu well, I knew Honolulu very well back in the mid eighties for KHVH News Radio 99 and KGU Talk Radio 76. The voice of "Hawaii".
Leafbox:
Well, you actually had the perfect Hawaii accent there. That was pretty well done.
Robert Jefferson:
Yeah, most people have no clue what the W is a “V” sound.
Leafbox:
It's not America and it's not Japan. It's in between both. But here in Hawaii, I think we have, there's a strong sense of Aina, of place, of localism, of culture, of being connected to each other. People have
Robert Jefferson:
The benefit of true diversity. You have the Japanese, the Chinese, the Portuguese, and the Polynesians, and then all of the other imports from around the world. So yeah, it's truly diverse. And that's not some just trite word. It truly is. Yeah. And then the local traditions, the first time I was ever called nigger was in Hawaii, in Honolulu. I was walking home one night from a club or somewhere. I was living in Lower Manoa, and I was walking up the hill from Honolulu. And these young, they were Asian kids, they were drunk or something, and they lean out the window, Hey nigger. That was the first and only time. I never felt any racial discrimination or antipathy or anything like that while I was there. And I was like, well, what the hell was that all about?
Leafbox:
What year was this in?
Robert Jefferson:
85, 86. But yeah, that was the only time. And so I would never let that taint my view or my experience in Hawaii. I mean, I was, it's this young, skinny black kid basically who got hired at two of the best radio stations in town. And then ABC News hired me to come back to, I left Japan to go to Hawaii, and then ABC News hired me to come back. So I'm not sure what that was all about, but that was the only time most people were very kind and gracious.
Leafbox:
So how long were you in Hawaii for?
Robert Jefferson:
About two years. And I meant to do this. I had to go back. When you get older, you kind of forget certain things, especially when it was four decades ago, a year and a half to two years that I was there. And I was able to, actually, I think I may have it, if you give me just a quick second here. There was a recreation of a voyage, a Polynesian voyage, the Hokulea, and I was there when they arrived at the beach, sort of like a spiritual leader, Sam Ka’ai. He was there, and yeah, I'll never forget that. They were blowing a co shell and they were doing all kinds of Hawaiian prayers and whatnot. It was absolutely beautiful.
Leafbox:
I didn't know anything about this. And your biographies kind of limited online a lot about your
Robert Jefferson:
Yeah, I used to be on LinkedIn and all that. I erased it all. I got rid of it all. I don't trust LinkedIn, and I don't mind people knowing about me. But yeah, I would just prefer to have control over it.
Leafbox:
I apologize about these people in, but
Robert Jefferson:
Oh, no, no, no, no. You don't have to apologize at all. You have to apologize.
Leafbox:
Well, I mean, the good thing is you saw some of the darkness in Paradise as well, that there's very complex class issues.
Robert Jefferson:
When I was in Lower Manoa, I lived at, it was a house share, actually an old converted garage share. I was sharing with two other guys. One was Filipino American and the other one was from Detroit, a black American. And the owners were Chinese, and they were really sweet, very nice. The old lady, she used to get, she realized how poor we were. So she used to give us our lunches or dinner boxes, whatever. And she would always say "Sek Fan" , she couldn't speak much English. Sek Fan" is Cantonese for Have you Eaten? Which means How are you? But basically, it literally means have you eaten Shan Shan? And yeah, she's very sweet. Her sons were very nice, very nice. So yeah, I mean, I never had any racial issues except for that one night. Luckily it was just that one night. Yeah, you're right. It's good that I did experience a little darkness in paradise
Leafbox:
Talking about darkness. I just was wondering what your concern a few times in the interview with the Black Experience guy, you talked about how you removed your Facebook account and how you just said that you deleted your LinkedIn
Robert Jefferson:
Pretty much at the same time. Yeah, that was like 2016. I had just gotten fed up with big media.
Leafbox:
Well, that's one of my first questions is that you were in big media. Yeah. What shifted that media disenchantment or disgust?
Robert Jefferson:
Well, it was what Facebook and Zuckerberg were doing, prying into people's private affairs, restricting people from doing this, that and the other. I could see it coming, what we have now, the blacklisting, the shadow banning the outright banning of people. I could see that coming. And I said, I don't want to be any part of this. That's why I did sign up for Twitter years ago. I tried to use it a couple of times, and I was like, what the hell is this for? I couldn't really see the purpose. And it turns out it's just a place for people to go and show off or b***h and complain about each other. I don't want to be a part of that. It's something that Americans don't learn in school, and that is Jacobinism, bolshevism, Communism, Marxism. It is exactly what's happening in the United States now.
It's being taken over. You go back and look at the French Revolution, the Jacobins, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, how they destroyed Russia, what happened in Germany during World War ii, the Nazism and all that. And they're doing it here now. Well, here, they're doing it in the United States now, and most people aren't taught about this stuff. They have no clue. They have no clue what's happening, and you can see it. For example, what's his name? The former FBI Director McCabe back in the seventies when he was in college and just getting out of college, he was identified Marxist, a communist. He was a member of the Communist Party, Brenner, the former CIA director, communist.
And the media won't say anything about them. You try to bring it up and they'll deny it. But I mean, their quotes are out there. They don't deny the quotes. And now these people are running government. I mean, the whole Congress just pisses me off. I mean, how do you have somebody making 170,000 between $170,000 and $200,000 a year owning million dollar mansions? What's Maxine Waters in California? She owns a four and a half million dollar house on a $170,000 salary. That's impossible. Nancy Pelosi is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Her husband is worth more.
Leafbox:
Robert, why don't we go back one second, and just for people who don't know about your career and who you are, just a one minute biography for people.
Robert Jefferson:
Currently, I am a broadcast journalist. I work for Japan's public Broadcaster, NHK, at which I am a news writer and an announcer. I worked for two sections of NHK , NHK World tv, and I also work for the domestic service channel one as an announcer. We have what's called here, bilingual news. And the evening news is translated by a huge staff of translators and simultaneous interpreters, and I'm one of the on-Air English language announcers. So on a sub-channel, sub audio channel, how you can tune into either Japanese or English or both. You can split the channels. NHK world TV is internet based. It's for a foreign audience. It's not allowed to be broadcast in Japan, sort of like Voice of America used to be banned from broadcasting in the United States until Barack Obama came along. It was illegal for the United States government to propagandize its citizens, and the Voice of America is considered to be propaganda.
And Barack Obama changed that to allow them to broadcast propaganda to American citizens. But anyway, I digress. So yeah, I've been in broadcasting as a professional. It'd be 50 years in 2026, actually started learning broadcasting in 1974. So next year will be my 50th anniversary as a novice, at least. I started in Philadelphia. I started, I heard it at W-D-A-S-A-M at FM in Philadelphia, if you can see that. I think it says 1977. I actually started in 1976, and I also worked at WRTI in Philadelphia, Temple University's radio station. And that was back in the late mid seventies. And then in 2003, when I went back to the States, I worked at WRTI, Temple University's radio station for a short while, while I was still in Philadelphia. Sorry to be jumping around like this, but right now, yes, I work for NHK right now. I was in high school.
I started studying television production in high school in 1974 as a freshman. And then in 1976, I went to work as an intern, a production assistant at WDAS AM and FM in Philadelphia. People may remember Ed Bradley. He was with 60 Minutes. He got his start at, I don't know, maybe not his start, but he did work at WDAS in Philadelphia for a short time. And I went on and joined. I was enrolled at Temple University after high school in 1978, and I only spent one semester there because I was just sick and tired of sitting in classrooms after having spent 12 years in grade school and already had experience. I even had a federal communications commission's license, a third class radio telephone operators permit, which I still have somewhere around here, the certificate be in the business. I wanted to be, my dream was to be a foreign correspondent, which came true later.
I'll get to that. And I wanted to be a war correspondent, but there were no wars at the time because the Vietnam War had ended, had it continued, I probably would've been drafted, but it ended in 75, and I came of age, well military age in 77. So I decided to join the Air Force. A friend of mine was thinking of joining the Air Force, and he wanted me to come along and basically sit with him and hold his hand while he talked to an Air Force recruiter. And so I went along and listened to him, and after he finished his spiel with my friend Tony, he turned to me and said, well, what about you? And I said, I'm fine. I'm enrolled at Temple University. And yeah, I've been a pursue a broadcasting career. And he said, well, don't you realize that the United States military has the largest network at the time in the world?
And I said, really? Never heard of that? And he said, yeah, I'll come back and I'll bring some pamphlets and show you what we have. So he did, did come back, and there was the promise of being stationed overseas. I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. And so here I had an opportunity to travel the world and be paid for doing something in the United States military, at least that I wanted to do. And it was so enticing that I said, sure, I'll do it. I said, get away from the college classes. That would just totally boring. And to continue doing what I had already been doing for the past couple of years, four years at least. So yeah, I signed up and went to the Defense Information School of Journalism and Public Affairs. Overall, it was about a two year course and my first assignment, I was never stationed stateside. All of my assignments were overseas. My first assignment was in Southern Turkey at Interlink Air Base, just outside the southern Turkish city of Adana, just off the Mediterranean coast, just above Greece and Cyprus, close to the border with Syria and not too far from Lebanon.
Leafbox:
Where did this interest for the foreign come from? Was your family also military family, or where did you have Philadelphia? Why were you concerned with the rest of the world?
Robert Jefferson:
My family wasn't, we weren't traveling military. All of my grandfather was a jet engine mechanic in World War ii. My father was in the Korean War, but he was stationed in Germany. His younger brothers were also in the Korean War. They wanted to take advantage of the GI Bill, which they did. My father went on to study architecture at Drexel University in Philadelphia, but from a very young age, I was very curious about news. My first recollection, well, what I remember most about my childhood, the earliest recollection that I have of my childhood was November 22nd, 1963. I was three years old when John F. Kennedy was shot. And I was wondering, why are all of these adults staring at the television and crying, and why is the TV on all the time? All day long, we had this black and white TV sitting in the living room. We lived in Philadelphia at the time, and I was just fascinated.
I could still remember the cortage of Kennedy's horse-drawn coffin on top of a horse-drawn carriage going down. I guess it was Pennsylvania Avenue towards the White House or wherever. I'm pretty sure it was the White House. And ever since that, I was just curious. I would sit when my mother would have her little cocktail parties or whatever, I would sit in the other room and eavesdrop. I was just curious about what they were talking about. I was always curious about news. Back in the sixties, you had the African liberation movements and the assassinations of African leaders. The Vietnam War was in full swing. Well, after Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson came in. Then there was the moon, the space race, how the Soviets were winning the space race, the first country to put a satellite in space, the first country to put an animal in space, the first country to put a man in space, the first country to put a woman in space, the first country to put a person of African descent in space in Americas was being shown up. See, we don't learn this stuff in school, but you could fact check me. Yeah, we had had newspapers galore. We had the Philadelphia Daily Bulletin in the morning and afternoon. We had the Philadelphia Enquirer. They had two papers a day. Of course, there was no internet back then, but people actually read the newspaper and actually talked about it. It was okay to talk about things. The civil rights movement was in full swing. It was quite a heady time to be young and impressionable.
Leafbox:
Robert, did your sister share this interest in media and international, your twin sister, you have?
Robert Jefferson:
No, not at all. Not at all. And I've, she recently joined Telegram, and I sent her a little welcome message, and then I tried to send her something newsworthy and she didn't want to hear it. She even said, I don't want to be seeing things like this. I forget exactly what it was. And so I deleted it. And I've never said anything like that. I have an older brother. I have two older sisters who are also twins, and then an older brother, and we used to send each other articles and we used to talk about things. But there's been a huge divide I found in America. A lot of people have joined a team, a tribe, and they don't want to hear anything else, whether it's the cult Covidian or the staunch Democrats or the staunch Republicans, the MAGA country people or whatever, people, a lot of people just don't want to talk anymore. But back in the sixties and seventies, people talked. They argued and they went out and had a barbecue together. There wasn't this vitriol in this division. Now, and this is done on purpose to divide and rule people. This is all being done on purpose. But back to your point, yeah, my sister, she was interested in sports. I wasn't. I became the house announcer at basketball games. I did play in junior high school. I did play football, but that was about it. I never played basketball, never learned the rules, never learned the positions. It just didn't interest me. I saw brothers fighting over basketball games and whatnot, destroying each other's bicycles over, and these were brothers how they went home and solved it, I don't know. But
Leafbox:
Just moving forward a bit in time to Japan, you do the Air Force, they train you to be a journalist or announcer, and then how do you get to Japan?
Robert Jefferson:
Not only that announcer, a writer, a camera operator, a technical operator pressing all the buttons in the control room, ENG, electronic news gathering, the little mini cam on the shoulder thing, everything they taught.
Leafbox:
I mean, this might be a direct question, but you talked about propandandizing the population, being educated as a journalist or person in the Air Force seems, I'm curious how that educational experience is different than maybe how you're teaching a Temple and what the goals of that information management is.
Robert Jefferson:
Well, it is interesting. I dunno if you've seen the movie, Good Morning, Vietnam. Remember the two twins who were censors, the identical twins who were censoring, they would stand in the other room just beyond the glass, staring at the DJ or whatever, making sure they don't say anything wrong or if they're reading the news or something. That's Hollywood. There was never any such censor. We had no one censoring us. We had host nation sensitivities. Here I am in Southern Turkey during the Iran hostage crisis. No one stood over my shoulder censoring me. When I put together a newscast, it was my responsibility, and nobody told me what I couldn't say or what I couldn't say. It was just be respectful. We are in a predominantly Muslim country, Turkey, and so be respectful. And I was actually studying Islam at the time, and so I was one of the few people who could pronounce the names of the people in the news back then, the Iranian Foreign Minister or the Iranian president, the Iranian Foreign Minister.. , and the president's name was..., and I was one of the only people who could even pronounce these names.
And the Saudi Arabian, who was the OPEC oil chief, Ahmed Zaki Yamani. I was studying Arabic at the time. I was studying Turkish and Arabic, and so I could pronounce these names, but we didn't have censorship. We used the wire services, United Press International, UPI and Associated Press AP. And they had some really good broadcast wires and far different than today. They were real journalists. Then.
There may have been some slants pro this or pro that pro Europe, pro-Israel or whatever, but it wasn't as blatant as it is today. I think we were far more objective and neutral back then than what I hear today, especially on the corporate networks, the big American networks, the cable networks and whatnot. We were far more objective and neutral than what people are listening to today. And this was in the Air Force. So the news that I was broadcasting was basically pretty much the same as people heard on the radio while driving to work in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, although I was in Southern Turkey, we tried to recreate the American media atmosphere there as either as DJs or news announcers, because we had all of the same inputs that you would have at a radio and television station back in the state. The obvious slants that you see today, that CNN, for example.
Leafbox:
What about Japan? That's one of my main critiques or questions I have about how the Japanese media is managed and your analysis as an American of how that media consensus is created in Japan. If you have any opinion on that.
Robert Jefferson:
Well, it seems to me, I've noticed, I've worked in Japanese media now for 40 years. It seems to me that now there's been a huge change. Japanese media used to be more curious than they are now. They seem to follow, how should I put it, the status quo, the western status quo. Don't, for example, the war in Ukraine between Russia and Ukraine, they're calling it an unprovoked attack on Ukraine. It was not unprovoked. Hello? There was a coup d'etat instigated by the United States during the aba, the Barack Obama administration, the overthrew, a democratically elected, the first democratically elected president of Ukraine, was overthrown by a US backed coup led by the state department's, Victoria Neuland and John McCain was there, John Kerry was there, Neuland. She was there handing out cookies in Maidan Square, and now they called it an unprovoked invasion. The Ukrainians were killing their own people.
They happened to be ethnic Russians, but they were killing their own people. 14,000 of them were dying in Eastern Ukraine. The Donetsk Lugansk don't question that. To answer your question, the Japanese don't question. They just go along with whatever Reuters is saying, whatever the AP is saying, whatever the Western American corporate TV networks or cable news are saying, it is just blindly following the status quo. And years ago, they didn't do that. They're taking sides because Japan and Russia have some territorial disputes, some four northern islands that Russia invaded and took over in the closing days of World War ii. And Japan and Russia have yet to sign a peace treaty. They have diplomatic relations, but they've yet to sign a peace treaty because the Japanese were upset that the Russians won't vacate those adds and give them back. But there's a lot of untruths being told in Japanese media about what's going on, that the Ukrainians are winning when they're obviously losing, that the Russians committing atrocities. And it's been proven that the Ukrainians military has committed far more atrocities than the Russians have, and on and on.
Leafbox:
Do you think that change in journalistic culture, where does that come from? Is that from just external pressure, the lack of, why do you think? Is that because of the decline of Japan economically, the independence that it's had? I'm just curious where you think that
Robert Jefferson:
There's a lot of them. Yeah, it is the economic decline. It's wanting to feel as though there's a feeling, in my opinion anyway. I sense that there's a feeling among the Japanese leadership that they want to be accepted. They have been accepted in the Western Bloc. That's a full fledged member of the Western Bloc, and they don't want to lose that position. But they sense it's obvious that economically Japan has fallen very far, and basically it's suicide. We had trade representatives, and I still remember some of the names, Charlene Barshefsky, the US Trade representative coming to Japan, forcing Japan to stop being successful economically, forcing their automobile companies and other industries to stop being so goddamn successful. How dare, how dare you produce such wonderful cars that everyone wants to buy, especially from the 1970s when they produced cars with great, great mileage, gasoline mileage.
And here we are watching Japan. It's already slipped from number two to number three behind China, United States. And United States is not the number one economic power anymore. And Western media, American media won't admit that, but America may have more in the way of money or wealth. But when it comes to purchasing power, there's an index called PPP, purchasing Power Parity, and then there's also manufacturing China, far outstrips the United States in manufacturing capacity and purchasing power of parity. So China is number one economically. The United States is number two. Japan is number three, but it's about to lose that spot to Germany, but then Germany is going to lose it to whoever. I mean, Germany economy has been screwed. Again, it's another example of the German economy is another example of how a company is committing suicide. All the EU is basically committing suicide, allowing the United States to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline, and it's like, whoa, we don't know who did it? Who did that? Who did? Okay, well knock it off. Joe Biden ordered that pipeline being destroyed, and we have him on tape saying that if the Russians do this, that pipeline is dead. We have Victoria Neuland saying basically the same thing. We have a Twitter message from someone in the US State Department to, I think it was the Polish leader. The job is done, and she got fired soon after that. I mean, it's all a sick game, a deadly game being played here.
Leafbox:
As a journalist and as a thinker about media information management, how do you think you are seeing through it? How are you seeing through the untruths? Why does writers at the New York Times differ? Is it because you're a foreigner in Japan that you think you have that, or where do you get that independent spark from?
Robert Jefferson:
I've got nearly 50 years of experience in news in international news as a foreign correspondent with ABC news here in Japan. I was also the Tokyo correspondent for the West German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle Radio at the same time that I was working with ABC. And at that time, I was also an announcer at Tokyo Broadcasting System. It was a weekend anchor at Japan able television. I did some radio programs and entertainment program music programs here in Japan. I've been around the world, not all everywhere. I haven't been to Africa, I haven't been to South America, but Europe and Asia and Pacific I've been to and covered stories. I can see how the news coverage has changed. It's very obvious to me. I can see right through it. I stopped watching television. I've got a television here. I've got one downstairs, big TVs. I don't even watch them anymore. I may hook them up to my computer and watch something online on my TVs, but I don't watch CNN. I don't watch Fox News. I'll watch little snippets of it online.
And one of my heroes was Peter Jennings, someone I really looked up to. He was with ABC. He started at ABC back in the sixties when he was 26 years old. He was an anchor for ABC's World News tonight. It may not have been called World News tonight then, but ABC's Evening News, whatever it was called back then. His father was a Canadian. He's Canadian. Well, he naturalized as an American citizen eventually, but his father was a news executive in Canada and Peter Jennings, I mean, he was a high school dropout. He never went to college, but he was absolutely brilliant. He was an autodidact. And yeah, I think he was quite brilliant. He didn't need such diplomas and degrees and things, but he felt that he needed to leave the anchor role and go and hone his skills as a journalist, which he did.
And he stayed with ABC, and he became the chief international correspondent based in London. And back in the early eighties, there was a tripartite anchor team, Frank Reynolds in Washington, max Robinson, the first black network news anchor in the United States. He was based in Chicago, and Peter Jennings was based in London. They had a wonderful, wonderful, and the ABC Evening News back then was absolutely wonderful. They actually told you what was going on around the world, but you could learn the names of countries and cities and leaders and places and people, and now you've got people on these networks now who can't even pronounce names correctly. Even people who are foreign correspondents can't even find places on maps. It's just, it's sad to see how low journalism has fallen and trust in journalism has really fallen. I mean, it's in the single digits now, which is sad.
So yeah, I can see through, I mean, the whole situation that erupted in February of 2022 in Ukraine, people like unprovoked attack by Russia. Russia wants to take over Europe. No, they don't. They simply want to be left alone. The United States under Bill Clinton tried to rob Russia, tried to go in there and steal Russian industry, the Soviet industry, basically to use the oligarchs who basically swooped in and scooped up all of these industries and made billions of dollars who were trying to persuade born Yeltsin who was suffering from alcoholism to basically sell out his country. He wasn't stupid, but he did have an alcohol problem, and he turned to Vladimir Putin and told him basically, dude, you got to help save Russia. A lot of Americans don't know the history between Russia and the United States, that Russia supported the American Revolution, that Russia parked some of its armada, naval armada off the coast of New York Harbor and told the French and off the coast of I think the Carolinas, and told the British and the French, don't you dare interfere in the American Civil War. The French and the British were trying to help the South and against the north, and the Russians, the Russian empires said, no, no, don't you dare.
Leafbox:
In one of the interviews you had with the, I forget the host of the name, but you said that you feel free in Japan. I forget the exact quote. You said, maybe like I'm a free black man in Japan.
Robert Jefferson:
Yeah.
Leafbox:
How does that connotate to how you analyze the world? I mean, do you think if you had been 40 year career in the States, you'd have this lens?
Robert Jefferson:
I have been back to the States once the first time to Hawaii for two years, and then when I was in 2000, I was turning, I think by the time I went back, yeah, well, that year, 2000, I turned 40. So I have been back to the states, and I had no desire to work for corporate media. I went back and went to work for WHYY in Philadelphia, which is an NPR and PBS affiliate, and I actually was an NPR correspondent. I was their Philadelphia correspondent. While I was there covering expressly presidential visits, whenever a George Bush would come to town, president Bush would come to town, I would join the White House press pool at the airport and ride in the presidential motorcade into the city and follow the president around. I was a pool reporter, and then I left WHYY and went out west.
I wanted to challenge myself and do more. So I went into media management and worked at a community radio station in Portland, Oregon. And then I went to another community radio station owned by Bellevue Community College, just outside of Seattle, Washington, and went into a management there as assistant general manager and program director at a radio station there. And it was wonderful to work at a nonprofit media organization teaching people how to do news. And when I was there, Portland, Oregon was voted year after year as the most livable city in America. Look at it now, a shithole, a shithole of left-wing people who've just destroyed the city. And I'd always consider myself left. But at 63 years old, now I'm conservative, not a Republican conservative. No, I'm just conservative of hopefully someone who's got a little bit of wisdom and who would like to conserve decency and morality and people's right to practice whatever religion they want to and to say what they want to look at, how free speech is being eroded in the United States.
Now, some of the things, I'm talking to you now, I'd be criticized or banished from saying, and this is by people on the left. We never heard anybody on the right saying banished them. And I remember when I was in Hawaii at KHVH News Radio, rush Limbaugh was getting his start. He was on KHVH. Larry King was on KHVH, and we allowed people to say what they wanted to say, Limbaugh. He would take the word liberal and say liberal. He would just vomit it out. But you had another voice on there, Larry King and other voices, left, right, center, whatever. And now look at how polarized and divided America is today. It is sad. It's very sad. But yeah, it is not like I'm here in Japan in a bubble. I can see everything. You see, I don't watch television, so I'm not watching KION or what, I forget what the other stations are. I wouldn't watch them. But if something is newsworthy, I can go online and see what's happening in Lahaina or Lana, as most of the journalists these days call it. They don't even do your research, learn the pronunciation, and they even put up a transliteration on the screen, L-A-H-H-A-Y-nah. It's not Laina, it's Lahaina.
It's just laziness. A lot of journalism today is just laziness going along to get along, being part of the team. And this is what I didn't like about sports growing up, just seeing brothers fighting over a goddamn ball game. And here we have that now, this sports mentality, this tribal mentality of wearing colors and painting your face colors of your team, and it's bled into our politics. Now. I remember the house speaker Tip O'Neill, he would say something, oh, my friend across the aisle, now it's that terrorist across the aisle or that oph file across the aisle or something. America has really devolved, and as someone who grew up at a time when in the sixties, up until the early to mid seventies, we didn't lock our doors. There were no home invasions. What happened in Lewiston, Maine yesterday, 22 people being shot. We didn't have kids going into school, shooting up each other. We had kids walking down the street with a shotgun over their shoulder. They were going to hunt some squirrels or deer hunting or something, and they did it right. They registered their guns, they wore the orange stuff, and what the hell happened? What happened to families? What happened to mother and father? Now you've got single women raising kids, fathers, making babies, and walking away, what the hell happened to America? And it's going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.
Leafbox:
Going back to Japan, I'm just curious, Japan has a history of political violence and disagreement.
Robert Jefferson:
Last year we had the assassination of a former Prime minister.
Leafbox:
Correct. So I think
Robert Jefferson:
The attempt assassination this year of another one, it's successor.
Leafbox:
So I'm just curious how you contrast that to the us or if you do, or I always feel like information in Japan is actually more free
If you look for it.
Robert Jefferson:
YouTube channel, well, not used, but websites aren't banned here in Japan as they are in the eu. They don't have these draconian measures like the EU does. And the United States would love to impose information flows freely here in Japan, if you know where to look for it. If you want it, you can look for it. You can get a VPN and disguise your location and find out more information. But yeah, political violence, there's a long history of it here. I mean, going back thousands of years, I mean, Kamakura, the city I live in here, there's a monument and the graveside of a guy named Hino who had his head lopped off because he disobeyed a Shogun. And just this morning I walked past his little, this little graveside. It is like, wow. And I looked into the history of it. He got beheaded because he disagreed or the win against a local warlord or Shogun, the leader of, well, Japan wasn't unified then, but it was becoming unified.
But yeah, Japan was extremely fascistic at the turn of the last century, the 20th century, prime ministers were assassinated. The military took over, got Japan involved in World War ii. Yeah, yeah. But it's been very peaceful here, post World War ii, there are lots of heinous crimes that are committed every day, seemingly ordinary people. People you wouldn't expect to fathers against sons, sons against fathers or against mothers. It happens here. Japan is not a paradise here, but it is. I do lock my doors here, but no one has ever bothered me here at my home. No one's bothered my car. People are very decent. There's decency here that is disappearing fast, disappearing in the United States. Neighbors who won't talk to you in the United States, I know my neighbors here. One reason I moved out of Tokyo is because neighbors, you lived in an apartment building. You get on an elevator, you're like, well, who are you? I wanted to know who you are.
I'm Robert. I live on the sixth floor. Who are you? I demanded people to know who people were. But here, people are curious. They want to know, well, who's this black guy who moved here when I moved here 17 years ago, and now everybody knows me. The police know who I am. They come by and check on me. They have a registration that you fill out so that they know who's who. But yeah, I've never bothered by the police. I don't fear going to the police station. I laugh and joke with him. One policeman came on his motorbike years ago when I first moved here a few years after I moved here. And he was just doing his patrols. And he slipped and fell, and he had some mud on his boots and up his pant leg. And so I helped him wash it off and whatnot. And we had a good laugh about that. Yeah, I mean, it is, I don't have to put up with foolishness, and I'll look at things on Twitter or X as it's called now, of black, especially youth running amuck in the states, going into convenience stores or department stores and just going crazy, acting crazy in fast food joints, tearing the place up, throwing chairs and tables and stuff. It's like, what the hell? I never experienced that when I lived in the United States. And everybody thinks it's normal now.
That happens. Something terrible is going on in the United States, as you say. It's happened in Venezuelas, it's happened in Colombia, it's happened in Mexico, it's happening in Europe. Now. The chickens are coming home to roost. I don't know, but something is afoot, and I'm simply saying, not today, Satan. Not here, not with me.
Leafbox:
So maybe we can go to your gardening project, Robert, because that sounds like a, to me, it feels like a counter to all that negative energy. You have this personal space, and you have such a wonderful voice and broadcast history, but now you're producing this content that offers an alternative. So I'd love to know where that comes from and why you're doing it.
Robert Jefferson:
It's catharsis, it's healing. Nearly 50 years of covering wars and murder and mayhem and thievery, and just, I'll admit it, it's still exciting when news happens. It's exciting to see. When I was a kid, I always wanted to be the first to know and the first to tell. I wasn't a snitch. No. But that's what attracted me to journalism was being the first to know and the first to spread the word for me. Now, after all these years, five, six decades of reporting the news, I'm tired. Some or so that I gave up drinking three years ago. I gave up alcohol, completely, cold Turkey in one day, April 30th, May 1st next day, Mayday, mayday, mayday. I was alcohol free. And I had been since then, desire, I even had still a few bottles left in the fridge and here and there, and I gave them away.
I had no desire to drink anymore. So my gardening, I've been doing that pretty much all of my life with some breaks in between. I grew up gardening, helping a neighbor, particularly with her garden. And then as a teenager, when I was also working at the radio station, and on weekends, during the week, especially in the summertime, during summer break, I worked for a landscaper, a guy in my town. He had a landscaping business. And I love working with plants, either cutting them down or helping them grow. Yeah, it is just beautiful for me. This is very cathartic, the gardening. And then something said, well, I've been doing this for years and I'm not, I thought about YouTube years ago, and it's like, nah, it is the alcohol that made me so lazy. I didn't even want to do it. And then finally, oh, about 2016 or so, 2016 I think it was, I made one video, and if you go back and you can see my very first video, it's featured my two dogs at the time, my band spunky and just showing my garden.
And then three years ago when I quit drinking, I needed something to do with my time because I'm an independent contractor, so I don't have a set schedule, schedule changes, and sometimes I'm busy and sometimes I'm not back. Three years ago, I was not very busy at all, and now I'm extremely busy and I love it. But yeah, it was a chance to channel my energies into something productive and to give something back to the world. Instead of talking about how many people got murdered in Lewiston, Maine yesterday, how to take this little seed, sprout it, grow it into a tree that's taller than me now, and to give something back. A lot of my subscribers and viewers, as you say, they mentioned how calming my videos are. And I think now that you've heard me talk for a while, you can see why I do what I do.
I've got a lot in me that's just screaming to get out, and it's not all negative, but there's a lot of negativity out there. And instead of joining that bandwagon, I decide to put this energy into something that can hopefully, even if people don't want to get into gardening or they can't because they live in an apartment. Someone just sent me a message the other day saying, I mentioned growing stuff. If you have a balcony, and they said, no, I live in an apartment. I don't have a balcony. Then I thought about, yeah, there's a lot of people who don't even have balconies, but if they can't do gardening, at least I can bring them some sort of enjoyment or peace of mind for the 15 or 20 minutes that they're watching my channel.
Leafbox:
Well, that's why I enjoy it. I think you're offering kind of like, yeah, just a counter to that negative informational, and also being in Japan, you're creating, as an American, you're offering this alternative Look, you can live in this calm way. You can go to the gardening store and be polite. You don't have to rob the store. You don't have to get in a fight. You can share this space. And you met this British guy, and he's doing the natural farming. Another form,
Robert Jefferson:
Actually, he's Dutch.
Leafbox:
Oh, Dutch, sorry.
Robert Jefferson:
He studied in Britain. He went to Oxford. And yeah.
Leafbox:
Anyway, it's just nice to see you building this community. I mean, you have the community of foreign correspondents and Japanese broadcasters, so it's nice to see you go very local, but now you're sort to, you can feel the layers building you're building.
Robert Jefferson:
Yeah, you're absolutely right. This is one reason why I wanted to come back to Japan. I went back to the States, and I was there for five years. Even though the people here is a majority Japanese country, it's not as homogeneous as you think it is because the foreign communities are growing here, especially other Asians, Vietnamese and Chinese and Koreans. The article in the newspaper just yesterday that I saw that the numbers are increasing quite a bit, but it's a place to come and meet people from all over the world. Hendrick, my neighbor here, I walked past this house every morning and I'm like, this is Hendrick. This is interesting. And then one afternoon I walked past and I see, oh, this is your place. And he looked at me like, who are you? Like, well, who are you? Why are you half naked out here in somebody's front yard and it's his front yard?
And I said, dude, we sat and talked for an hour and a half, and then I came back with the camera. I said, if you don't mind, I'd like you to give me a garden tour and whatnot. He just sent me an email this morning. He's going back to Shizuoka, which is south of here. He's got some land there. Him and his son are going down for the weekend to do some work on the land they just bought. They don't have a structure on the land yet, but they're just working the land. Yeah, it's a chance to meet people from all over the world. And I found that when I was in the States, there's this closed mindedness, this closed mentality. You in Honolulu, you've got a lot more, as we were saying earlier, there's a lot more diversity, cultural diversity, ethnic diversity, and that makes a living in Hawaii so nice is that diversity.
It's not just all the same types of people or people. They had their enclaves here and there, but there's more of in the United States, I mean even in places like New York or even the larger cities, people are separated in different enclaves. Here, there's a lot more melding in, well, it wouldn't make sense for all Americans to live in this section or all the Chinese to live in that section. But I mean, you do like an ost, there's a preponderance. There's a lot more people of Korean descent than in other cities. And in Yokohama, a lot more people of Chinese descent. But you don't have these ghettos that you see, these ethnic ghettos that you see in the States. So here, it's, it's a place to be, place to be yourself, to be oneself, to be who you are. A lot of people, especially when they're young, they come here and they do this.
If, I dunno if you remember that song, turning Japanese, I forget who, a Divo or somebody turning Japanese. Oh, yes, I'm turning Japanese. Oh, yes, I think so. I forget who did the song. And people play that little thing. Everybody goes through that. We're in kimono and going to the Matsui, the festivals and stuff. Everybody goes through that. Then you've kind of had enough of that. But it's a place to, because I don't care. Even if you get Japanese citizenship, you're never going to be Japanese. So it's a chance to come and find out who you are. I don't have to speak like a brother from the hood, and I really can't do it anyway, so I better not even try. I don't have to act black. You may see in some of my speech patterns and mannerisms and whatnot, but I can just be me. We were talking, you were trying to figure out my accent. Earlier. When I was in high school and junior high school, I used to be ridiculed by other black kids. Bobby talked like he white because, well, if you notice, most children speak very clearly. They don't have black accents or this accent or that they speak very clearly. It's not until they get into puberty and beyond that, they start adopting these speech mannerisms of black or Asian or whatever.
Leafbox:
Do you think Japanese have the same freedom when they come to the US or when they leave Japan?
Robert Jefferson:
Yes. Yes. Because Japanese are under extraordinary pressures to fit in, to join a company, to fit into society, to not break the rules. It's a very rules-based society. And that's why you see such rebellion. And a lot of it, it may be superficial. A young Japanese kid with dreadlocks or now since the nineties, the big fat is to bleach blonde your hair, bleach your hair blonde. It's such a, and they're trying. Even still, there's a debate going on for high schoolers about the length of hair. They have to keep their hair at a certain length. The girls can't perm their hair. In many of the schools, the boys, if they have curly hair, they have to straighten it. And now you've got kids of mixed heritage. And there was a kid who's part black and part Japanese, and he was trying to wear cornrows at his graduation ceremony and couldn't attend. They banned it from attending and things like that. But see, I didn't grow up that way. I didn't grow up here for one. But yeah, there's a huge pressure. There's a lot of pressure, tremendous pressure for Japanese to conform, and they leave a lot of 'em still. There's a huge desire, oh, I want to go to the States, because they can finally explore who they are, who they want to become.
And I had many students when I was teaching at Temple for 13 years, they said, yeah, next semester I'll be going to the main campus. And my advice was, be careful, make good friends and be very careful. But I said, go and explore. I mean, you're going to meet some wonderful people there, and you'll meet some horrible people. Some of them will be white, some of them will be black, some of them will be fellow Asians. You're going to have good times and bad times, but just take care. Be careful. Watch your back.
Leafbox:
Robert, talking about your classes at Temple, I think you were teaching ethics. What were you teaching? Ethics. I taught Journalism. I taught journalism. I started teaching media management and organization. That was my first course. Then I taught writing courses. And then at the end, I was teaching, the last four years or so, five years maybe. I was teaching ethics in journalism and the history of journalism. They were separate courses. So I taught history one semester, ethics, the next history, the ethics, the next, or over the summer I teach one or the other. So the history of journalism and ethical issues in journalism. Yeah.
Well, I was just curious about what topics you were particularly interested in the ethics of journalism.
Robert Jefferson:
A lot of it dealt with hypocrisy in the media and using clips from media showing the hypocrisy and the outright lies, showing how, for example, CNN, there's a CNN correspondent in London, staging a demonstration. They went and got a group of people from a particular group. They were Muslims, and I forget exactly what they were protesting against, but they were actually telling people where to stand and how to stand. And the cameraman only framed these people in the shot to make it look like it was a huge crowd, but it was only about 10 or 12 people. I don't know why they recorded the whole thing, but I showed them the clip of the correspondent and the producers telling people what to do, when to hold up their signs. And then suddenly, oh, we're live now in London and it's all fake. And I played a lot of them. Have you seen the clip of the news catches like a montage of clips of newscasters all across the United States. We're concerned about our democracy. And they're all saying the same thing.
Leafbox:
Yes, it's troubling. I played
Robert Jefferson:
That years ago, three, four years ago to my classes. And that was from Sinclair Broadcasting. They had all of their affiliates around the country read the same script, and somebody got ahold of all of them and put them all together in this montage. And that was three years ago. And look what we have now, people being canceled for saying the wrong thing. And these news organizations claiming to want to protect democracy. No, no, no. This is what communists do. And in America, we don't learn about the communist Ong. In China, the cultural revolution back in the 1970s, it wasn't that long ago, just 50 years ago, of students going after their professors, putting paint on their faces, making them wear dunk caps and stuff. And what's the guy's name? Weinstein in Oregon, who was raked over the coals by his student.
Leafbox:
Oh, Brett Weinstein. Yes. Weinstein. That was before Covid
Robert Jefferson:
Out of his university. Him and his wife. Yeah. Yeah. And I was being, they didn't have the balls. My core supervisor, temple University didn't have the balls to confront me. He wouldn't even have, we never once sat down and have a conversation. How about anything? He's one of these probably Marxists. I mean, they were marching up and down the streets supporting George Floyd, who just recently this news came out when he died, that he was not killed by the police officer. And this is what I was trying to tell my students. He died of a fentanyl and not fentanyl. It's fentanyl. Look at how the word spell you idiots. NYL is nil. Tylenol, fentanyl. And you got broadcasters who don't even know the difference, can't even pronounce the word correctly. But he died of a drug overdose. Fentanyl was in his system. Alcohol was in his system, cocaine was in his system. And what was he doing when he got arrested? He was trying to steal from a shop owner by passing counterfeit bills. And he and the police officer were bouncers at a nightclub. They knew each other, they knew each other. But that was hushed. This whole thing was hushed and cities burned. Milwaukee burned. Five police officers in Dallas were killed. Shot in their cars or on the street or wherever. Five of 'em just murdered by B bbl, M and Antifa.
Leafbox:
And what was your relationship with the Temple professor? You were saying?
Robert Jefferson:
He was my core supervisor and he was talking behind my back, calling me a conspiracy theorist. Journalist should be conspiracy theorists. That's why we had, I have Stone and Jack Anderson and Seymour Hirsch, who's still alive. And Glenn Greenwald. All journalists should be conspiracy theorists. We have to theorize about conspiracies because our government carries them out. The Nord streaming bombing was a conspiracy to tell Germany and the rest of Europe stay in line. The Gulf of Tonkin incident, it was a conspiracy to get America more involved. The Vietnam War, the bombing of Pearl Harbor was a conspiracy not only of the Japanese, but Theodore Roosevelt, not Theodore Roosevelt. Franklin Roosevelt, FDR, to get America involved in World War ii, and he blamed it on Commanders of the Pacific fleets. There we should always be conspiracy. And this is what I was trying to teach my students to always ask questions. When I was a news director at the radio station at Portland, I was news and public affairs director, and I would put little reminders on the wall. Stay curious. Always stay here when somebody crossed out the C and put an F. Stay furious.
And yeah, this is what I was trying to teach my students to question authority. Our job as journalists is to give voice to the voiceless and to question those in power. Not to just power what they say. I mean, this whole Covid thing, especially Black people who were complaining about systemic racism, they ran out to get the man's poison injected into them multiple times. And now we're learning just how dangerous that st is. People dying of myocarditis, sports, people first and now just regular people, children, they injected the st into children. My own twin sister, she got injected and now she doesn't want to talk much about her medical problems. I mean, this is what the media has done to the United States in particular. It's happened here too.
Leafbox:
Robert, do you know what post-truth is, meaning the sense that we're moving into a media empire state, that it's almost impossible to know what's real or what's true AI like you're talking about the CNN,
Robert Jefferson:
It's Orwellian
Leafbox:
Generating narratives. What are some tools?
Robert Jefferson:
We have AI news announcers now. Yeah,
Leafbox:
I know, but how do you try to stay sane in a world where it's like a Philip k Dick universe in the sense that everything is unreal and unreal at the same time? So how do you navigate this post-truth? Reality?
Robert Jefferson:
You have to have a good knowledge base. You have to have lifelong learning. When you see that link in something online or whatever, click that link. Go deeper. When you see that word you don't know, click on it and look up that word. Broaden your knowledge base, read history. Go onto YouTube and look at some of the historical documentaries. And one, some of it, it's b**t, but the more knowledge you have read books. Who's reading books anymore? Not many people, whether it's an audio book, but you can listen to it, or if it's an ebook. Read study history. That's why I was telling you about the history between Russia and the United States. Most of us Americans have no freaking clue that Russia and the United States were once so very close. That's why Russia sold us Alaska for pennies on the dollar, and it was so far away. They hadn't even explored much of their far east. But yeah, and most people don't know that Russia and the United States, that Soviet Union were allies in World War ii. It was that Russia did most of the heavy killing in World War II to defeat the Germans. We're not taught that.
The whole thing with a Russiagate, you remember that? It was totally bogus. I was trying to tell my students then that this is b**t. It was all b****t, and I was proven right. I'm not there anymore. I tell the truth, but I was right. And those students will hopefully realize that their professor was trying to tell them the truth, and my superiors were trying to undermine me, and it is just sickening to see that whole Hillary Clinton cooked up that whole Russiagate thing and the FBI went along the FBI should be disbanded. The CIA was involved in overthrowing a duly elected president. And if it happens to Trump, I don't care what you think about Trump, I'm not. Are you a Trump supporter? No, I'm not a Trump supporter. I'm a truth supporter, and I would say this in class. I'd be the honest, do you support Trump?
No, I don't support, I didn't support Barack Obama either. Here's this obscure, skinny Black dude from Chicago who's elevated to the presidency, first to the Senate, and then the presidency. This is all b**t. It's all b**t. He's fake. I'm sorry, but yeah, the key is, is to become an autodidact, mean someone who learns on their own. Yeah. See, and a lot, Al Robert, you're just a conspirator theorist. It's like grow up. I've had enough, I tried to warn people about the Covid injections. It is totally bogus, and most people don't realize that the whole thing was a Department of Defense project. Most Americans had no clue. That was all DOD working with the Chinese. Anthony Fauci sent millions of dollars because of gain of function. It has been banned in the United States, but they did it anyway, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. So they farmed it out to the Chinese and then blamed it on them. Isn't that some nasty st?
Leafbox:
I mean, that's one theory. There's also the Chinese theory, so there's so many theories and alternative theories, and that's why I,
Robert Jefferson:
Yeah, the Chinese theory is like, okay, okay, we're not stupid, so we're going to weaponize this thing against you. The art of war. That's another thing people need to study. People like Sun Tzu, study Confucius.
Leafbox:
One of my last questions, Robert. I have a lot of friends in America who are concerned about collapse in the US and the West, and they're all dreaming about either moving to Japan or moving to Alaska or doing the homesteading kind of thing. I lived in South America and we had a hyperinflation situation when I was young, so I've seen it firsthand.
Robert Jefferson:
Where were you?
Leafbox:
In Brazil when I was like 13. We had hyperinflation. Yeah. And so I'm just curious how you feel being in Japan. Are you going to retire? I mean, do you plan on staying the rest of your life in Japan, or what's your, do you want to return to the states or who knows what the so is?
Robert Jefferson:
I have no desire to return to the States. I did twice. And when I went back, was it 23 years ago, middle age, I could see then the downward spiral of American society. America's a beautiful country. I drove from Pennsylvania all the way across the country to the West coast, to Oregon, three and a half days. It took me, it's a beautiful country. They're beautiful people in America. I'm not anti-America. There's beautiful people there. Our governments, local, state, national, are basically ripping us off America's in debt. They've been talking about 33 trillion in debt. No, no, no. It's more than that. We're talking about quadrillions. If you can imagine trillions of quadrillions of dollars in debt, the pension plans are broke. There's no money there. Social security. There's no money there either. Remember Al Gore talking back in the 2000 election about the social security lockbox? People, Social security is gone. They'd spent all that money, and this is why they had to take us to war. To war. And there's going to be, I'm watching. I'm hearing a number of different voices. We're going to war on a global scale, world War iii. It's going to happen. They have to because most governments are broke. America's broke. Japan is broke. The European Union is broke, but Japan has been around for thousands of years. It still has cohesion.
They seem to be committing suicide. Young people don't want to have children. Businesses, when I first came to Japan, there were clear societal roles, familial roles. The father went out to work and he worked hard, and he worked for his company for a lifetime, whatever, and that's all gone now. Young people can't even find jobs or they're getting part-time jobs or whatever.
Everybody should first of all know where their food comes from. Where's the chicken come from? The supermarket not done. People should know where their food comes from. They should know how to grow food. They should start growing little things like herbs and tomatoes and potatoes. They're the easiest thing to grow. Go to the supermarket, buy some potatoes, wash them really good, and then put 'em in a brown paper bag. When they start sprouting, put 'em outside. Or if you have some old potatoes that start sprouting, put'em outside in a bag, I use grow bags, buckets will work.
Just have some drainage in them. People need to grow, need to know where their food comes from, and they need to start learning how to grow their own food and just like their ancestors did. Not that many generations ago when I was growing up in the sixties, I had friends whose parents could barely speak English. They're from Germany, they're from Italy. They were from Hungary or Ukraine. They left their countries for a better life. Americans of today may have to lead the United States for a better life. Don't just sit in the same place going through the same. I tried to tell my elder brother, how about Mexico? Oh, man, Mexico is dangerous. Dangerous. There are some wonderful places in Mexico, Probably. He's five years older than me. He's 68. He could live very well on social security there. People don't want to take the chance.
I always get on an airplane. Boom, I'm gone. I couldn't wait to get on an airplane, go somewhere else. Will I stay here in Japan? Yeah, I'll probably, but I'm keeping, I've got the corner of my eye on a side escape route. I'm not sure where. But like I just said, I can live on a retirement very cheaply somewhere. It could be, I don't know, Cambodia. It could be Vietnam. There's no major wars going on there right now. And the people there still, they still know how to smile. I do get asked this quite often, keep your eyes wide open, Japan. Not unless there's a major war. And it seems as though the leadership here, the political leadership, are just itching to get into a fight with someone and Japan's military, and they do have, it's called the Self-Defense Forces, but it's a military, but they have no practical experience fighting.
They'll get massacred. They don't understand guerrilla warfare. They don't understand urban warfare. Japan should just stay pacifist. I'd be glad to see American military bases. It leaves Japan. I mean, it's how I got here is through the military, but there's no need. Japan can defend itself, and actually it shouldn't be any need. Japan, Korea needs to stop fighting over some dumb s**t that happened a long time ago. So much of their culture has come from China and India and elsewhere through Buddhist connections and contacts. But yeah, Japan should stop trying to ape the west. Stop trying to imitate the West and be Japanese. Be Asian for once. Yeah, I mean, Japan and Korea should not be arguing the way they still are and China as well. But then these are global forces trying to divide and rule to keep the Korean peninsula separated. That's ridiculous that the Korean peninsula is still separated.
The same people still quarreling over some dumb s**t over some ideology from Europe, communism or capitalism, whatever the ism is, things are going to get tough. And this is why I walk five and a half kilometers every morning, an hour, an hour and a half. I don't drink anymore. I practice intermittent fasting, which is basically, for me, it means, and I do this every day, not just once a month or so. Every day. I stop eating at 5:00 PM I don't eat again until after nine o'clock the next morning. Then I'll have a large breakfast between then and five o'clock in the afternoon. I'll have some snacks, some fruit, some nuts, some baked goods that I make, homemade cookies or zucchini bread or something like that. I don't eat dinner anymore. Basically it's one meal a day, maybe two, but I never eat in the evening.
So between, I go to bed at eight o'clock every night. I'm asleep. I go to the bedroom at about 6:30, 7 o'clock, and I'm asleep by eight. I wake up at 3:30, 4 o'clock every morning, go out for my walk. And yeah, because at 63 years old, I'm only getting older. I'm not getting younger. So I need the stamina. I need the strength. A sports club. It's really unnecessary. I mean, just walking is plenty. I reversed pre-diabetes. I reversed hypertension, high blood pressure. I had fatty liver disease, so I reversed renal disease by quitting alcohol. I reversed hepatic disease, pre-diabetes and heart disease.
Get your life in order. Get your health in order. And if it's not working out where you are, think about getting up and going somewhere else. People are afraid to do that. Sometimes the boiling frog syndrome, you can sit in that pot of water, and that's not really true on the way, but it does make sense. If you sit into a pot of water, you don't really notice the heat rising until it's too late. And
Leafbox:
Then Robert, what's the best way for people to find you on the Kamakura Gardener Channel or any other way?
Robert Jefferson:
Yeah I'm on Patron. I spread it out. I'm on Patreon, patreon.com where people can actually support with a very small $3 a month patronage up to, what is it? I think my highest is $25 a month. That's A VIP patron. I'm on locals. Are you familiar with locals?
Leafbox:
Yes.
Robert Jefferson:
Yeah. So I'm on locals. I'm on Telegram Rumble, Odyssey and Bright Eon. Brighteon
Leafbox:
And obviously YouTube...
Robert Jefferson:
And YouTube.
And here in Japan. I'm online as well, so I do post my YouTube channel online as well. Things are going to start changing rapidly. I think the United States will see the end of Biden very soon. I don't know exactly when or how it'll happen, but Biden will not be president for very long. I think we're going to see something very, very shocking. Even more so than September 11th, 2001. The whole world is going to go through some cataclysms here, and what I'm simply trying to do is keep a clear head and stay clear of political parties and social movements, BLM or Antifa and all that silliness. Now, seek out like-minded people. Get in contact with them. I mean, there's a lot of good stuff on YouTube. YouTube, there's a lot of shitty things that the company does, but there's a lot of good people on there. It's a wonderful place to go and learn something.
Leafbox:
Well, that's why going back to your local work, I appreciate you reconnecting to the ground and grounding yourself in this local community of the plants and the Kakuta community. I think that's healthy.
Robert Jefferson:
We all need to go back and develop community. There will be chaos in Japan, but it won't be long lasting. Just after World War II, it was extremely chaotic. A lot of people were homeless. The black markets was terrible, but they coalesced into a nice group once again, within 10 years. Yeah, I'm in the winter of my life. I guess I'm transitioning from autumn into the winter of my life. I've just felt more at home overseas. That's why I told Renzo on Black Experience Japan, that I feel like a free Black man here. I don't have to act black. I don't have to say, oh, that's my tribe. I can just be me and I can have my own views, and I'm not afraid to express them. Conspiracy theorist. Well, up. Yours too, buddy. So what? I don't care because what's the difference between a conspiracy theorist and the truth? Well, about six months really. All of the stuff that I was accused of in conspiracy theorist about it turned out I was right. Not that I was right, it was right. The topic was Russiagate, this, that, and the other. All of this stuff. Just give it time and the truth will out.
Leafbox:
Robert, I don't want to take more of your time. Be well.
Learn More @
TKG on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheKamakuraGardener/about
TKG ON PATREON: patreon.com/TheKamakuraGardener
TKG ON ODYSEE: odysee.com/$/latest/@TheKamakuraGardener
TKG ON RUMBLE: rumble.com/c/c-1708335
TKG ON BRIGHTEON: brighteon.com/channels/robert619
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit leafbox.substack.com
From Hino, Shiga, Japan, a conversation with biohacker, health advocate, and naturalist, Sachiaki Takamiya. Ancient wisdom echoes through Takamiya-san’s life work, coalescing with the vigor of modern scientific discovery to birth what is known as the Ikigai Bio-Hacking method.
Authoring several books and a wide ranging blog, Takamiya-san has significantly contributed to the realm of Bio-Hacking. His seminal work, "Ikigai, BioHacking," serves as a bridge between the timeless Japanese natural health philosophy and the advancement of scientific progress in the realms of wellness and longevity. Ikigai Biohacking empowers individuals to reclaim their health through a simple, practical, and multimodal method that include:
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Diet
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Exercise
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Mentality
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Spirituality
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Planetary Health
The nuanced, nature-centric approach that he adopts sets him apart from the other “Bio-Hackers” , in contrast offering a holistic, grounded perspective on health and wellness.
As we delved into the heart of our discussion, Takamiya-san graciously shared insights on his biography, the essence of maintaining an independent spirit amidst a world obsessed with quick fixes.
His dedication to promoting a sustainable lifestyle, not just as a means to personal health but also as a blueprint for planetary health, reflects a depth of vision that is both rare and needed in today's biohacking landscape.
Learn more about https://ikigaibiohacking.com/
Summary Notes:
Introduction
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00:55 How I discovered Sachiaki Takamiya
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04:27 Promoting Ikigai Biohacking - Blend of Japanese health practices and Western biohacking
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Exploring and Relevancy of Biography to Current Work
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07:12 Background in English-speaking countries
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13:10 Return to Japan
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18:00Exposure to Materialism in the Bubble Japan
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20:00 Exposure to alternative lifestyles and naturalist movements
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22:57 Interest in spirituality and philosophy of life
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27:54 Conformity and Individuality
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36:48 Red-pilling his Teacher
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Focus on the Ikigai Diet and biohacking practices
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43:55 - Summary of Philosophy
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Emphasis on natural methods and avoiding commercialization
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Interest and Discussion on health benefits of Natto
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48:28 Skepticism towards artificial biohacking and reliance on technology
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51:56 Concerns about privacy and data collection
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55:52 Importance of maintaining natural abilities and intuition / Critique of Technology
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Focus on individual choice and respect for different perspectives
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58:23 Cult / Group Dynamics. The dangers of biohacking
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1:06 Non “standard practices”
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Other Topics
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1:10 Naturalist Experience of COVID 19 in Japan
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1:14 Japan respecting Individual Autonomy
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Polarization in the West vs Japan
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1:15 Discussion on Current Interests and Future Projects
Learn more about
https://ikigaibiohacking.com/
Full transcript @ leafbox.com
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit leafbox.substack.com
Author and Thinker Charles Hugh Smith boldly declares: the status quo is unsustainable.
Through his writings, Charles pierces beneath the surface, challenging conventional narratives and exposing the deep-seated systemic issues that erode our social and moral fabric."
From exploring the moral decay undermining social order to crafting viable solutions, Charles ventures into the depths of values, priorities, and tools essential for navigating our rapidly evolving society and economy.
We dive into his biography, the role of his upbringing in Hawaii, his creative interests, and his pursuits for sharing and exploring for those trying to adapt, understand and reshape the world.
Follow Charles Hugh Smith @ oftwominds.com
On Twitter @@chsm1th
On Substack @ charleshughsmith.substack.com/
Time Stamps / Topics2:23: Life on Lanai / Biography8:44: Producing a Underground Newspaper / Parallels to Current Work12:27 Punahou and Neo-Feudalism 18:32 Lessons from Time Capsules23:05 The Value Physical + Mental Labor28:05 Life on the Mainland 32:47 The Doom Hierarchy + Models for Collapse39:33 The Importance and Role of Finance45:01 On Ideological Frameworks Lens50:00 On Creative Pursuits + The Authentic Self54:00 The Issue of Multi-polarity 1:00 Exploring Solutions and More1:05 What Hawaii can teach the world1:08 Current Focus: Mythologies1:10 Contact Information + Close
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Interview: Eric Shahan - Shinobu Books
Eric Shahan, an American translator based in Japan for the last 20 years, has been independently publishing translations of Japanese texts, many of which are esoteric or obscure with a current focus on martial arts manuals, the esoteric, irezumi or tattoo culture, 18th century manga and other works.
In this conversation we discuss his approach to translation, his wide range of interests and his encouragement and tips for others try independent translation research and publishing. Shahan's translations are available on Amazon.
Shinobu Books
Twitter: @ShinobuBooks
Instagram: @Shinobu Books
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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit leafbox.substack.com
This interview explores the profound journey, revolutionary insights, and current work of Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. Graduating with Honors as a Medical Doctor in 1984 from Bashkir Medical University in Russia, she embarked on a path of exploration that would reshape her understanding of health and well-being.
After five years as a Neurologist and three years as a Neurosurgeon, life led her to the UK where a pivotal moment changed everything. Her son's diagnosis of autism propelled her into an intensive study of its origins and treatments. This journey marked the genesis of her groundbreaking theories, linking neurological disorders to nutrition. Through this process, she achieved a second Postgraduate Degree in Human Nutrition from Sheffield University, UK, pivoting her career towards nutrition.
Dr. Campbell-McBride's impact reverberates through her role as a specialist nutritionist, especially renowned for treating children and adults with learning disabilities, mental disorders, as well as digestive and immune issues. Her legacy crystallized in her landmark 2004 book "Gut And Psychology Syndrome. Natural Treatment Of Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Depression And Schizophrenia." This work unveiled the GAPS Nutritional Protocol, a transformative approach that has garnered global recognition and a devoted following.
Her insights extend beyond neurology and psychology. In 2007, her second book "Put Your Heart In Your Mouth!" confronted prevailing misconceptions about heart disease, offering a fresh perspective and advocating for the inclusion of natural animal fats and cholesterol-rich foods.
As her work unfolded, she encountered the adverse effects of plant-based lifestyles, inspiring her 2017 book "Vegetarianism Explained. Making an Informed Decision." With scientific precision, she dissects the digestion and impact of animal and plant foods on the human body, revealing the nuances of diet choices.
The year 2020 marked a pinnacle in her journey with the release of "Gut And Physiology Syndrome. Natural Treatment For Allergies, Autoimmune Illness, Gut Problems, Arthritis, Fatigue, Hormonal Problems, Neurological Disease And More." This comprehensive work completed the GAPS concept, embracing the entirety of human health and its intricate connection to the gut.
Beyond her academic accomplishments, Dr. Campbell-McBride has transformed her knowledge into action as a regenerative farmer, cultivating a thriving organic and biodynamic paradise that stands as a testament to sustainable farming practices.
A sought-after keynote speaker, Dr. Campbell-McBride shares her insights on the global stage, influencing both practitioners and the general public alike. As a Member of The Society of Authors and The British Society for Ecological Medicine, and a Director on the Advisory Board of The Weston A Price Foundation, her contributions to the realm of nutrition are substantial.
In this interview/podcast episode as we unravel the life's work of Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, a visionary whose journey has ignited a paradigm shift in understanding health, nutrition, and the intricate connections that bind us to the world around us.
Photo Credit: Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride
More information on Dr Natasha and her GAPS work
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Leafbox:
Dr. Natasha, do you prefer to be called Dr. Natasha? Dr. Campbell McBride. What's your preferred title?
Dr Natasha:
Dr. Natasha is fine. It's shorter, easier yes?
Leafbox:
Well, thank you so much again for being so punctual and taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to me. I actually learned about your work, Dr. Natasha, from another interview I did with author Tao Lin, and he's an interesting novelist and nonfiction writer who's a Taiwanese American, and he had severe health issues, borderline autism. He followed a pretty traditional American diet, used a lot of alcohol, drugs, all kinds of things to try to alleviate his problems. He moved to Hawaii and then pretty much eliminated everything and now kind of follows a mixed carnivore diet where he eats local meats from Hawaii, local eggs. He does eat fruit and some chocolate, but basically eliminated all vegetables, seeds, seed oils, and it was just such a radical transformation. His voice, his mannerisms, his ability to concentrate, all radically changed. And some of my listeners obviously were taken aback by that. He's kind of an alternative guy anyway, and he writes about interesting things and that led me to find your work. And I listened to some other podcasts with you and I'm really intrigued in what you're doing. So Dr. Natasha, maybe before we start, could you give us just a little bit of background about your family, about your medical experience, about your maybe growing up in Russia, anything you think relevant?
Dr Natasha:
Well, I'm a medical doctor trained in neurology. I worked as a neurologist and neurosurgeon in Russia before I moved to the UK where I started with my family. And my first child was diagnosed with autism at the age of three, which threw me into a very steep learning curve. I had to save my own child. So the result of that, long story short was the discovery of the gaps concept, gut psychology syndrome and gut physiology syndrome. My health has recovered fully. It's leading a normal life. And that's how my clinic began. That's how my work began. That's what pulled me out, the mainstream medicine and into the alternative fields and the gaps concept was born based, starting with my own child and then thousands of other children. And initially I started working with autism quite logically because I was trying to help other families in the same situation as we were.
But then I've discovered that other learning disabilities are caused by the same thing as autism. And then I've discovered that the siblings of these autistic children are not well either, that they have allergists, digestive problems, fast eating habits, headaches, various other health problems, and the parents are not healthy either. And as I went further and started treating whole families, trying to help the whole family, not just one child and a family, I've discovered that all chronic diseases really are gaps, all of them. And that's what Hippocrates, the father of modern Medicine has said thousands of years ago. He came to that conclusion that all diseases begin in the gut. And today we know that he was absolutely correct, that all diseases begin in the gut. So the gaps, nutritional protocol, which have designed and developed over years, working with people with various health problems, not only learning disabilities in children and adults, mental illnesses, autoimmune disease, allergists, neurological disorders, hormonal disorders, all kinds of health problems that they all start in the gut, that their roots are in the digestive system. And when we heal those roots, when we heal the digestive system, all sorts of illnesses disappear. They start gradually disappearing and that rheumatoid arthritis can disappear and multiple sclerosis can disappear. And schizophrenia and epilepsy and what, asthma, eczema, psoriasis, cystitis, any illness, no matter how far away from the digestive system the illness might manifest, make no mistake, the roots of that illness are in the gut and might be fixed. The gut, the disease disappears.
Leafbox:
So Dr. Natasha, maybe we can just rewind a bit in time. I'm happy that your son or daughter are healthier now. How old are they?
Dr Natasha:
It's a son. It's my first son. He's 30 now.
Leafbox:
- Wonderful. Was he born in Russia or was he born in the UK?
Dr Natasha:
No, he was born in the UK.
Leafbox:
I'm curious about the shift. I know you did your medical experience and your medical training in Russia. How do you think that differs to, I mean it's a western country, but do you think, what role has that had in kind of your exploration of your son's disorders or being a foreigner or naturalizing to the UK? I'm curious how that shift has made you more open or not or just what's the role of the Russian education you think, in your path in discovery of this gaps concept and whatnot?
Dr Natasha:
It wasn't a Russian education, it was a Soviet education. I grew up in the Soviet Union and I moved literally at the moment when the Soviet Union, that's how my faith dealt my cards to me that I moved to the UK at the moment when the Soviet Union ended, when it was ending. So I'm a Soviet doctor and I was trained in the Soviet Union, and that was a very unique country. There is a huge nostalgia in rationale for that country, for what was lost with that country. The medical education was very, very different from what it is in the western world. Very, very different. It was far more holistic. There was no commercial element to it at all. There was one pharmaceutical company in the Soviet Union. It was run by the state, so there was no competition. And the impetus for every doctor, we were trained to use all sorts of natural methods first to help the patient before any pharmaceutical was even considered.
And indeed, the majority of people recovered with natural methods, natural approaches. We had in every GP surgery, we had a large physiotherapy department. So physiotherapy was used extensively before you would consider antibiotics or anything else for common cold or any infection. So it was a very, very different approach. And the whole medicine was structured around prophylactics, around preventing disease. That is why there was an extensive system in the Soviet Union of Sanatoriums and the rest places and holiday places where the whole country would go on their holidays. And the holidays were usually a month, it was usually in the summer or any other time of the year. And it was this extensive system of literally thousands of these places all over the Soviet Union in the best natural locations on the sea, on the rivers, mineral waters, whether are natural muds or any other natural resources where these places were set up where people would come there for a month, they will be examined by a doctor on the first day when you arrive and a prescription was made, what you need, what kind of diet you need, what kind of gymnastics you need, what kind of treatments perhaps massage, special bath, special mud treatment, special electro treatment, physiotherapy, all sorts of things.
And practically every member of the Soviet Union went through that at least once a year, an MOT for your car.
Everybody went to the sanatoriums and I grew up with this system. I went to the sanatoriums throughout my childhood from a very, very young age myself because I had a trauma when I was a child. I broke my spine and I was sent to two, three places like that per year throughout my childhood to prevent any complications when I had treatments. And all of that was paid by the state. When I tell people in the western world about this, nobody can even imagine such a system. That's what we had in the Soviet Union. That is what the state is capable of when it is really put to service to the population of the country. So it was a very, very different medicine, very, very different approach, very different bed manner for the medical doctors than in the western world. And the pharmaceuticals were just not an item at all. They were unimportant. They were only used in situations when they were absolutely essential when all other options have been explored.
Leafbox:
What was your experience then? What was it like? I mean, with the U S S R collapsing, obviously that had its own challenges, but as you entered to the UK medical environment, I'm curious what your experience was in that shift
Dr Natasha:
As it happened. When I came to the UK, my child was already one year old and as I have a second son as well. So I was pregnant with a second one, and I looked at entering the medical system in the UK and it was quite a serious challenge because you had to go through very serious exams, you had to prepare for those exams. So I started the whole process. I started working on all of that planning to go into the mainstream medicine in the UK. But then as my child got diagnosed with autism, and I quickly realized that my own profession had absolutely nothing to offer my precious child, I had to put all of that on the back burner and focus on my child, focus on finding ways to help him. And when that happened, we had no internet. I'm sure people can't even imagine such a thing nowadays.
We had no internet. All I had was a telephone and a local library. That was all, that was all. So I just contacted the local library when we got the diagnosis, I remember asked them to send me every book they can find on autism, and a week later, a bunch of books have arrived. And one of those books was very helpful. I found some contact details at the back of that book, started phoning all of these people because there were phone numbers there from some of these people were in the U Ss A and we shared information and they shared lot of information and then more contacts. And that's how it all went on, and that's how we found my husband and I found ways of helping our child. And there were conferences that I went to and I met wonderful people. That's how information came to us and we started helping him.
And it was a spectacular success. Yes, of course, yes. And as I was in charge of that situation, obviously I had no time at all because my second baby was born at the same time. I had no time to try and enter the medical system in the UK. I built quite a strong community of other families with autism, with autistic children. We were all sharing information and trying to help each other and find what we can find to help our children. So as I started discovering the gaps concept, I started helping everybody I knew around. That's how my clinic appeared and grew. And at that point I realized that the most important basis of human health is food. Food. There is nothing that can come close to the effect of food on human health and know disease too. So at that point, I decided that that's where I need to look and that's what I need to focus on.
I went and got a master's degree in human nutrition here in the UK, qualified as a nutritionist, and that's how I basically started my clinic, my education of a medical doctor. Nobody can take that away. And I was allowed to call myself a medical doctor in this country, but I was not allowed to work in the mainstream medicine, to prescribe pharmaceuticals and to witness death. And I didn't need any of those because I was working exclusively with diet and natural approaches. That's how life basically redirected me and our children. That's what I've learned. Our children come to us as teachers. My son was my teacher. He came to me and he just took me by the scruff of my neck and said, you're not going to the mainstream medicine. You're going to look here, and that's where you're going to go. And I'm very grateful that that happened to me, and I'm very grateful that I've taken that direction because it brought me true professional satisfaction and happiness and the feeling that I'm really doing something worthwhile in this world.
Leafbox:
So Dr. Natasha, when you had your first son, what was the experience of approaching autism like in the early nineties, both in Russia and in the UK?
Dr Natasha:
Well, all over the world, it was considered to be incurable. And the mainstream doctors were more focused on the parents than on the child. They were telling you that you need to start looking for a residential care facility to get rid of your child, basically put him there forever and there's nothing you can do. We don't know what causes it. It's probably genetic and so on and so forth. All of that was unacceptable to me because I felt that there is something that can help my child. So that was a very, very hard time as a parent, very, very hard time. But human beings need to be uncomfortable in order for us to change anything in our lives because if we're comfortable, we don't change anything. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, so to speak. So through that very traumatic time, very difficult time, something beautiful came and it changed, transformed my life, the life of my whole family, and the gaps concept was born and the gaps nutritional protocol was born, which is now helping millions of people around the world.
I've written my first GAP book in 2004. It was called Gut and Psychology Syndrome. Naturally, I focused on the brain at that stage in my life. So that book focused on all the pathology that can come from the brain. So it focused on mental illness, on autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, A D H D / A D D, and other learning disabilities in children. And that's what I described, the gaps, nutritional protocol. And I described what causes autism, and I described what causes schizophrenia and epilepsy and addictions and depression and eating disorders and A D H D, any kind of pathology coming from the brain is gaps from my point of view, all of it. And I've explained where these diseases come from, what causes them, and I've given a solid protocol on how to heal yourself from them, how to reverse these situations. I never expected that this information will be so needed in the world, but obviously it is because the book just took off like a rocket and it's now translated into 27 languages.
We have more translations coming. I'm not translating them. People in various countries read it who speak English, they read it in English and then use the protocol, get results, and want to bring that information to their own countries so they translate the book. And so it became a global phenomenon. Gaps became a global phenomenon as a result. I have a second. In 2020 I've written a second gaps book called Gut and Physiology Syndrome, both abbreviate to the same gaps in the English language. And that one focuses on the physical illnesses on the rest of the body, on all the autoimmune diseases, on allergists, on hormonal problems, neurological problems, chronic inflammation, chronic infections, various form of arthritis, and so on. So every disease begins in the gut and gaps. Nutritional protocol is designed to fix the gut, but once you fix the gut, the roots of your disease are removed and the disease then just disappears and some people faster in other people slower.
Leafbox:
Could you summarize some of the issues you find with the gut and maybe your protocol just for people who aren't familiar with it?
Dr Natasha:
The premise of GAPS is that human body is a microbial community. There are more microbes in your body than there are human cells, and nothing in your body is microbe free. You've got microbial communities in your blood, in your heart, in your lungs, in your brain, in your joints, in your muscles, in your bones, in your skin, on all mucus membranes everywhere. There are microbes in your body. They are in charge of you. Pretty much the biggest microbial community in your body lives in your digestive system. Why? Because if you ask any microbiologist, what is the most powerful influence on the microbial community in nature, the answer will be immediately food. You change food supply to any microbial community, whether it is in a pet traditional laboratory, or whether it's in some natural environment. And everything will change literally within hours because microbes produce trillions of babies per hour.
They change very, very fast. Certain microbes will disappear, other microbes will appear, and the whole microbial community will change. So food has a profound, profound effect on every microbial community in nature. Because the human body is a microbial community, food becomes the most profound influence on human body. And because we place our food that we eat into the digestive system, the majority of that microbial community lives in yoga. That's where the big ministry is of your microbiome, the big government, all the general subir offices, all the commanding echelons are there in the gut. And when you change what you eat, when you change your diet, you change the food supply. That microbial community changes. And because it's connected to the rest of the microbial community, everywhere else in your body, in your brain, in your eyes, in your blood, everywhere else, they will change all of that too.
So if your body is in a diseased state, your microbial community has a certain characteristic, it has certain microbes proliferating and commanding the whole thing, the whole place. When you change the gut flora, that ministry in your gut, they will change the lot in your body and they will create a healthy state in your body. And that is what gaps diet does because the core of the gaps institutional protocol is gaps diet. We remove all the foods that are difficult to digest for human being and which feed pathogenic microbes. Instead, we focus on the foods that heal and seal the gut wall, the gut lining. They build you a new shiny, healthy gut wall, basically healthy gut and the rest of the body, they build you beautiful, healthy tissues in all of your body. And at the same time, they change the microbial community in your gut and make it beneficial for you, rebalance it, reharmonize it, bring it into harmony with your body and with good health. And as a result, the whole body heals. That's how gut nutritional protocol works.
Leafbox:
And then what are some of these in your elimination diet? What are you finding or you're theorizing are the most difficult foods that need to be eliminated first?
Dr Natasha:
There is a fact that we have known in our sciences from 1930s, and this fact is that the only things on our planet that can truly digest plant matter plants are microbes. What are plants? Vegetables, fruit, grains, beans, nuts, seeds, greenery, whatever the plant kingdom that human beings consume, whatever from the plant kingdom they consume. The only things on our planet that can truly digest any plant are microbes. Microbial community. Mother nature used that fact in designing the digestive system of a cow or a goat or giraffe or another herbivore animal, it gave them several huge stomachs full of microbes. A cow has three enormous stomachs called rumen full of microbes, and it's these microbes that digest the grass for the cow. No big animal, no animal, no bird in this world can digest plant matter itself. It's the microbial community in their gut that does that job for them.
We human beings do not have a woman. We have a small stomach which produces hydrochloric acid. The acidity can go below two below one pH when we are hungry, very hostile environment to any microbe to survive in. That is why human stomach has virtually no microbes living in it. There are only few microbes that manage to survive in there. Tiny, tiny numbers. So what does that do? That tells us that plants are indigestible for a human stomach. Human beings are not designed to digest plants. If your digestive system is strong and healthy, then you can eat a fair amount of plant matter and your digestive system would cope with it. But the more your digestive system is damaged, the less you're capable of surviving and eating. Plant matter, the hardest things to digest within the plant kingdom are seeds, all seeds. What are seeds? All grains, all cereals are seeds, nuts, beans.
Many other things are seeds. Plants, you see, they fix to one place in nature. They can't run away from a predator. So when the predator comes, the plant doesn't want a predator, an animal to eat. Its babies because its seeds are its babies. It wants its babies to grow. So every plant equips its seeds with a whole host of chemicals which damage the digestive system of an animal that eats them. They're called antinutrients. And this can be lectins, enzyme inhibitors, phys., salicylates, phenols, and there's lots of other. It's a new area of research and it's quite rapidly developing research. So all seeds are pretty much indigestible for the human digestive system. On top of that, they're equipped with many poisons, specifically designed by the plant to damage your digestive system. And when this poison is absorbed, the damage your connective tissue in the body, what is your connective tissue?
All your joints, your ligaments, your fascia, capsules of your organs, all the sheaths between layers of muscles. The shafts where your nerve struggle, the blood vessels, the whole system of blood vessels and the heart are connective tissue. So your bones are connective tissue. The skeleton of your muscle is connective tissue. So all of that gets damaged in your body by these chemicals. So unless you have a cast iron and very, very healthy digestive system, majority of people cannot handle plants very well. And the more their digestive system is damaged, the less they're capable of digesting and processing the plant matter. When we look at the animal foods, however, meat, fish, eggs and dairy, we find that they're easy to digest for the human digestive system. Hydrochloric acid, pepcin and other elements of your stomach juice are ideal for unraveling and digesting meat, fish, eggs and dairy.
These are the things that digest properly in the human stomach and then they're passed into the several meters of intestines where absorption of food happens. And the only things that can be absorbed are the things that got digested properly, broken down properly, and then they feed and build your physical structure that you live in. The skeleton, the muscles, the brain, the heart, the lungs, the liver, the whole physical structure that you live in, your body or the human body. And when we look at the human body, about 70% by weight of your body is water. When you remove water, what's left, the dry weight is almost half and half protein and fat. When we analyze human protein and fat in the lamp, we find that in this biochemical structure, it's very similar to proteins and fats which come from animal foods, meat, fish, eggs, and dairy.
Plants have lots of proteins, lots of fats, but in there biochemical structure, they're inappropriate for building human protein and human fat. On top of that, the indigestible, the most well-researched protein coming from plants is gluten. And I think in the western world, certainly everybody heard this word by now because majority of people cannot tolerate it. Gluten damages them and they get all sorts of gluten intolerances and symptoms and diseases and problems from gluten, and that's only one protein. There is a myriad of proteins in plants and all of them are indigestible for humans and very damaging for humans. So gaps nutritional protocol is based on this knowledge, the easiest for human beings to digest and the most nourishing and building and supporting nutrients come from animal foods. That is why the staples in the gaps. Nutritional protocol are meat stock that we make from bones and joints and the other bits and pieces of the animals.
We eat a lot of organs that is liver, kidneys, heart, lungs, brain glands, all sorts of organs from the animal because the structure of the body of any animal in this world is very similar to the structure of the human body. So whatever organ in your body is ailing, you need treat the same organ from the animal. So if your liver is not very well, you need to eat liver over other animals. If you have a kidney disease, you need to eat kidneys. If your brain is struggling, you need to eat braids of other animals. If your lungs are struggling, you need to eat lungs. If you've got a chronic pneumonia, for example, or you had a pneumonia and you can't recover, you're just struggling to recover from it. You get the lungs of a healthy beef, beef, lungs or pork lungs or long lungs, you put them through a mincer, make a lovely chili for yourself or make some burgers with this lungs, one meal like that, your lungs will be off. They'll recover literally from one meal because your lungs will receive the perfect ideal combination of nutrients to rebuild themselves after the damage, after pneumonia, bronchitis or any other infection. The same with the heart, the same with the kidneys, the same with every organ. So
Leafbox:
Dr. Natasha, a quick question. When you studied nutrition at Sheffield, what was the response? I mean, I would call yourself an alternative nutritionist. What is the framework for nutritional studies right now in the UK? Are they still pushing kind of a traditional pyramid, US kind of U Ss d A type food diet, or what's the framework like in the traditional nutritional world? I mean, what are other doctors thinking about what you're advocating?
Dr Natasha:
That's a good question you're asking because I was nearly thrown off that course. I kept arguing with the professors on the course because it was very mainstream and there were no other courses at that time. They were just mainstream nutritional courses in the UK it was at the university, and we were told all the dogmas of the mainstream, and it was drilled into our heads that fat and meat cause every disease in the world that you must not eat eggs and butter and bacon and kind of with some condescension that would tell us that fish is okay to eat while you fish, but otherwise everything else was evil. Absolutely. And carbohydrates were pushed in a very, very strong high carbohydrate diet. That high carbohydrate diet is the best thing in the world world and everybody should be eating high carbohydrate diet. And some of our professors will start their morning lectures from, have you had your Kellogg's conflicts for breakfast? They're fortified with B vitamins. They're very good for you, so on and so forth. So I remember that I was naively arguing with some of the professors about the dogma we were taught. And when I was threatened that I'll be thrown away from the thrown off the course, I had to be quiet about it and just get my degree. But obviously I came to that course already with a lot of knowledge because I was already, my child was already 90% healed. I was already working with many, many other families, so I knew better.
Leafbox:
What was the role of medical or nutritional studies in your medical education? I know in the West, they barely study nutrition at all, if at all in traditional MD roles.
Dr Natasha:
We started nutrition, but a little bit more than in the west, but I wouldn't say a huge amount. But we did have a nutrition study of some sort, and we were given various knowledge about various diets for various illnesses, what was appropriate to eat for stomach ulcer, for example, for another digestive disorder, what was appropriate to eat for mental illness or any other. So we did have some basic, basic knowledge, but again, it was quite mainstream in that sense. I wouldn't say that it was anything on the par with what I know now today, but this course that I went through, it was very helpful for me to know what the other side wants to say and what the other side thinks and where it comes from and why. So that gave me a good understanding of that, and that helped me to write my books because I have a book on heart disease where I explained that fat and cholesterol do not course heart disease.
So eggs and butter do not cause heart disease and bacon doesn't cause heart disease. They actually reverse it and prevent it. They heal you from heart disease and that what causes heart disease is all these high carbohydrate nonsense, those breakfast cereals and vegetable oils and sugar and wheat and processed carbohydrates. That's what causes heart disease. And I've written a book on that subject called Put Your Heart in your Mouth, where I explained the whole concept and it's fully referenced. Then I have a book on vegetarianism. I started talking about the plant foods versus the animal foods. I explain all of this in that vegetarian book, and I explain to the audience in the vegetarian book that veganism is not a diet. Veganism is when the person eats no animal foods at all. Only animal foods are the feeding, building foods for the human body. Plants do not feed us.
They do not build your body, they do not nourish us. Plants are clean that provide powerful cleansing substances for us. That is why we eat them, because it's important for us to be nourished well, and it's important for us to be clean on the inside. So plants are cleanses. So when a person goes on a vegan regimen, and if this person has a lot of toxicity accumulated in the body, a cleaner body feels better than a toxic one, they start shredding all that toxicity and they start feeling better. And many symptoms start disappearing. And this is the time when these people start the evangelical blogs and talk about to the whole world about veganism, that it's the best thing in the world and maybe even write a book or something like that. But then after a few weeks, usually the majority of people know more than 40 days, the body finishes cleansing and it gives the person a signal, I'm hungry now feed me the way this signal is given.
You are given a desire for a whole roast chicken or a lamb chop or steak or a pot of cream or eggs and bacon or something animal like that, which will feed and build your body. Problem is many of these vegans by then have convinced the whole world that veganism is the way to go and written books and written blogs. And they're doing this for religious reasons or political reasons or emotional reasons. They don't listen to their body. They force it to continue cleansing when the body needs feeding. So at that point, the body has no choice but to start breaking down muscle bone to feed vital locals to feed the brain, the lungs, the heart, the liver, other organs you can't survive without. So the person starts losing bone mass and start losing muscle mass and start losing brain mass because about 40% of brain dry weight of the brain is cholesterol.
Another 40% are saturated fats and it's very heavy on protein, the brain and many, many other substances, which can only come from animal foods. So they start losing the brain capacity, their cognitive ability declines, their memory declines, and they're not able to even realize what is happening to them, what is happening with their produce. So veganism is not a diet, it's a fast. It is a form of fasting. And in my vegetarian book called Vegetarianism Explained, I have a chapter on fasting where I describe different forms of fasting. The simplest form of fasting is when you just drink water and eat nothing. And then there are juice fasting, and then there's mono diets when you can eat, adjust apples or just grapes or just drink milk or do something else. And veganism, veganism is a form of fasting. It'll cleanse your body nicely, it'll provide you with a lot of cleansing, which is wonderful for some situations, but nobody can fast forever.
So veganism is not a diet. It is not something that a human being can live on for long periods of time and definitely not for the rest of the person's life. Vegetarianism can be sustained as a lifestyle as long as the person consumes plenty of animal foods to sustain the physical structure of his or her body. And such vegetarian cultures exist in India and some other places in the world where they eat plenty of dairy, high-fat dairy, cook everything on ghee and they eat lots of eggs. And whenever they get the chance to eat meat or fish, they never say no to it. So they do eat them and the rest they take with their plant mat, with their rice or vegetables. So whatever else they Len, whatever else they eat. So that's where I explain what vegetarianism is and what mechanism is. And I don't know of any other book that puts it that way and how plants work in the human body and how animal foods work in the human body.
So coming back to the GAPS diet, the staples in the gaps diet are animal foods. And it's interesting that you started this interview with giving an example of a person who went carnival, who stopped eating plants altogether. We have this movement now, and I will tell you another story. Some 10 years ago I was contacted by a group of parents, group of mothers who were breastfeeding mothers. They had a few weeks old babies vomiting, diarrhea, vomiting, diarrhea. The child is not growing, is not putting weight on, not developing mentally or physically. Doctors do testing find that the child is allergic to all protein on the planet.
And so at that point, the mothers were recommended to stop the breastfeeding. The child was put on the elemental formula made out of Sawyer and all sorts of other ingredients, and they could not give the child anything apart from some boiled carrots or something that doesn't have any protein in it. And the children were just not recovering, they were not thriving, they were deteriorating. So I knew then that plants are difficult for a human being to digest. And the more the digestive system is damaged, the less the human being is able to handle plant plant foods. So we put these children on the first stage of the introduction diet. That is a gaps introduction diet where the only plant matter we consume well, well-cooked vegetables and only soft parts of vegetables in tiny mouths. Even that was not enough for these babies. Diarrhea continued. So the next logical step was to remove all plant matter for these babies.
And that's what I did. That's what I recommended to these mothers. We put the babies on a no plant gaps diet, not a leaf, not a vegetable, not a speck. Out of plant kingdom was consumed. These babies lived on meat stock, on organs, on boiled meats, on fermented milk and on raw egg yolks. And we started recovering diarrhea, started stopping, vomiting, stopped. Children started putting weight on, and then the rest was history. Now all of these children have recovered beautiful children, bushy tailed, bright eyes, intelligent, doing well at school, no disabilities, no residual damage of any description, physically, mentally, a hundred percent children, beautiful children, they recovered. But it took us many years before we could introduce the tiniest amount of plant matter into their diet. Some of these children were on no plant diet for 4, 5, 6 years, some even longer before we were able to introduce the tiniest amount of crochet, well cooked and mashed, even the small amount of plant matter would cause the diarrhea to return in these children. What these children taught me is that human beings can live without plants perfectly well, strictly speaking, we do not need to eat plants at all.
Leafbox:
We just talked to my daughter, she refuses all vegetables and just loves beef. That's her favorite food.
Dr Natasha:
There we are. There we are. You can leave her alone. She knows what she's doing.
Leafbox:
Yeah, I think
Dr Natasha:
So. Listening to her body, we do not need five a day. We do not need rainbow colors. We do not need any, any of this variety. We can live without plants perfectly. Well. Then I started using this no plant diet with children with all sorts of colitis, Crohn's disease, adults with severe mental illness, people with cancer, and everybody started improving. And I now have a community of young people and older people who have been on a no plant diet for many years, and they have no intentions of introducing plant matter because they're doing well. They're afraid to eat plants. So the no plant gaps diet basically goes in parallel with the carnival movement, the primal diet, and all the other movements where people eat no plants when they live entirely on animal foods. And all of these people prove, again, the fact that human being can live perfectly well entirely on animal foods.
Of course, plants are nice to have. They give us tastes and flavors and colors and fun, and it's lovely to have them, but your digestive system needs to be strong enough to handle them. And plants need to be prepared in a certain way to make them more digestible. And one of the major ways of doing that is fermentation. Lactic acid fermentation. Fermentation. Fermented foods are a big part of the gaps. Diet, human beings around the planet fermented everything. Every kind of food in nature can be fermented. Everything meat can be fermented, milk can be fermented. Yogurt and cheese, that's fermented milk. Fish can be fermented, even eggs can be fermented. Chinese have fermented egg recipes, and not only Chinese, but some other cultures around the world. And of course, all plants in nature can be fermented. And people fermented plant matter for I don't know how long, at least for thousands of years to make wine and to make pickles and to make fermented foods like that.
When we ferment food, we employ microbes. Remember that fact that we knew from 1930s only microbes can digest plants. So we use that knowledge to predigests plant matter outside our bodies in a crockpot somewhere or in a jar. We allow microbes to digest plants for us, and then we consume that digested plant. And with it what we consume, we consume a whole host of probiotic microbes. So these are probiotic foods. We boost our microbial community in the body with a balanced community of microbes. It's full of enzymes, which help us to digest food and which help us to dissolve scar tissue and sclerotic tissues and inflammation, all sorts of problems in the body. And we consume nutrients in that plant matter in a pre-digested form, in a bioavailable form. I'll give you an example, A helping of sauerkraut , which is fermented cabbage will give you 20 times more bioavailable vitamin C than the same helping of fresh cabbage, because in fresh cabbage, vitamin C is locked in a cellular structure of the cabbage.
And your human digestive system cannot extractive. It'll go right through you do you know good in a sauerkraut, in a fermented cabbage, which will ferment it outside our body somewhere in a jar, in a crockpot, the microbes have done all the work. They've released the vitamin C from the cellular structure of the cabbage into the juices, into the whole mixture. So when we consume sauerkraut weeds, large amount amounts of bioavailable natural vitamin C. In fact, fermented vegetables and fermented fruit are the best vitamin C supplements in the world, much better than any supplement in a capsule you would buy. So that's just one good example. So whatever food the person cannot digest and it's causing health problems for the person, we ferment that food and then we cook it, and then the person tries it again. And in many cases we find that in that form we can digest it and we can start with that and build the gut wall and heal the gut wall and seal it, close all the holes in it, and then gradually, gradually the person, many of these people then can start introducing that vegetable or that fruit or that other plant matter without fermentation when the gut becomes stronger and healthy and it's capable of handling that.
Leafbox:
Dr. Natasha, it just reminds me, I was one of my neighbors works for PETA, and he's a strong vegan, and I was arguing with him that I think ice cream is healthier than all the broccoli he eats. And I'm just curious how you approach the evangelical kind of religiousosity around nutrition. I mean, some of the carnivores are just as bad as the vegans in terms of advocating for their religious belief in their nutritional practice. I'm curious how you remain neutral or evidence-based in your approach.
Dr Natasha:
Every human being is different. We need to understand that we are all very different. We all have different genetics. In the last century, people started traveling all over the world. We're all mixed up. There are no people now. There are very few people who are born in one place, grew up in one place, and spend the rest of their life in one place. Majority of people travel and the father is from that end of the world. The mother is from the other end of the world. The grandparents are from all over the world. So the genetic stocks and the racists got all mixed up around the world. So genetically, we've all mixed up. And another fact is that if your ancestors, all of them come from some tropical hot area of the world, chances are you can live on more plants, you can digest more plants, and you can handle more plants, and you'll do better by eating more plants and only have a smaller amount of animal foods to sustain your physical body.
But the further north we go, people whose ancestors come from some northern Europe and northern countries in the world, chances are you need to eat lots of meat and fat. You need to subsist largely on animal foods. And every human being has to find this balance for themselves because we are all very different. So what suits one member in the family may not suit the other member of the family at all. Every human being needs to find that fine balance and the cells. And in my blue book, I have a very large chapter explaining how to do that, how to figure out what is right for you, what works for you, and what foods you can have. There's another dogma in our world that we should have a great variety of foods. It comes from supermarkets that you should have cherries from Chile in January and strawberries from, I don't know, Israel in the middle of winter and all of these colors and varieties and rainbow colors and what have you.
But if you look at a human baby, what variety does a human baby half when it's breastfed? No, it lives on one food, on breast milk, and it drives beautifully. It doesn't need any varieties at all. And majority of humanity until the last 200 years lived in one place and produced their own food because there was no food industry, there was no agrochemical industry and there were no supermarkets. People basically ate what grew in their local area, what they could get and what they could produce themselves. So their diets were very limited, particularly in the winter. So they didn't need variety. And in those days, people were much healthier than the modern populations of the western world who had all these rainbow colors and variety and are all sick all over because the health crisis we have in the Western population is unprecedented. Practically. Everybody's got some kind of chronic disease and taking some kind of medication. So you need to figure out what is right for you, what your body needs.
Leafbox:
Dr. Natasha, do you have any concerns about some people who eliminate all these diets than becoming more resistant towards a variety of foods? For instance, if someone lives on a carnivore diet for years, you said they fear introducing a plant matter. Do you ever see cases where people become so intolerant that they almost become allergic to those plant matters again, or it actually worsens their potential health outcome?
Dr Natasha:
Well, it comes to intolerances. There is a phenomenon which has been described a long time ago now. It's a well-known phenomenon in the alternative medical circles, which is called a masking phenomenon. If you're intolerant of some food, but you continue eating it for breakfast, lunch and Zina, your body reacts, but you are not aware of it. You don't assign your symptoms that you have. You may have migraines, you may have some lapses in memory. You may not sleep very well. You may have a skin rash or chronic cystitis or maybe some other niggling problems, but you would not assign them to this particular food. And you are not aware that you are allergic, that you're reacting to that food. It's not doing you any good. But when you remove that food and after a couple of years, it takes at least two months for your body to cleanse the debris of that particular food.
Once your body cleanses off it and stops reacting to that because you stopped eating it, and then you try to have a little piece of it, you will get such a reaction that you will have no doubt whatsoever in your mind, gosh, I can't tolerate this. What's happened before? I was eating it every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and I didn't react. And now after this diet, I suddenly started reacting to it. So it's the fault of the diet. Something's been done to me, to my body. No, what happened? You were reacting to that food all alone, all of your life, but because you removed it for a period of time, that reaction got unmasked.
Your body now gives you a clear signal to your mind that you cannot eat that. This is a typical situation with bread and pasta and other things made out of wheat flour. People who lived all their life eating bread and pasta and breakfast cereals and other things made out of wheat, biscuits and cakes and what have you. When they stop eating wheat, it takes at least two months for the body to cleanse the debris of whatever elements of wheat were stored in your body and were in your body. And then if you have a piece of bread or you have a biscuit or something like that, the reaction will be very serious and you will know in non certain terms, your body will tell you you cannot eat wheat. And it's basically unmasked. That's what happens. Majority of humanity in the Western world cannot eat wheat.
They do not tolerate it, but wheat is addictive. In fact, many plants are addictive and many seeds are addictive. When you go to Asia, rice is addictive and rice is the major cause of allergists and problems in the population. If you go to Latin America, you find that maize is the number one cause of allergists and other problems. It's the staple, whatever is the staple in a particular population that is the major cause of problems, health problems in people. And it's a hard decision to make for many people because that's their comfort and that's what they say they love and they can't live without. You tell an Italian that they can't live without their pizza and pasta, particularly somewhere in Napoli or areas like that. It's very difficult for people to accept that. But the body will let you know after you've removed it for a period of time, the body will let you know.
Leafbox:
Okay, fascinating. Could you tell me a little bit more about your thoughts on the changes in the processing of food and the industrialization of food? I know that you have a small farm and you grow vegetables and have livestock. I'm just curious how your relationship to the production of food has changed or evolved over time.
Dr Natasha:
What is done to food in the western world in particular in the industrialized world is appalling, absolutely appalling. Starting from seed, starting from plowing the soil, starting with all the chemicals, industrial arable agriculture, which is a number one cause of planetary destruction, it's industrial arable agriculture. And then what the food industry does with all this commodity stuff that they grow for us and what's in the supermarkets, the whole thing. When you learn, and as I was working with food for years prior to becoming a farmer, an organic I am an organic farmer and husband, have been now for 10 years, you come to a solid conclusion that you cannot trust anybody in this world, in the western world to produce your food. You have to produce your own food. That's what I've realized some 15 years ago and my family, we started looking for a farm for a piece of land, and we found one, and now we are self-sufficient.
The piece of land that we managed to find here in the UK was very damaged. And we are still surrounded by industrial wasteland, by arable industrial fields sprayed and sprayed and sprayed, and commodity crops are grown in rotation, but we are like an oasis in the middle of that in industrial wasteland. And when we started, we had virtually no top soil on our farm because it was found conventionally for many years. Old industrial arable agriculture destroys soil, it kills it, it turns it into dead dust that is incapable of sustaining any life, and that's what we will inherited. Basically, it rains in Britain, thank God. So the land was covered in grass, but when we tried to plant our first few trees, we broke our folks and broke our backs trying to dig up holes because the topsoil was maybe an inch thick, thick or maybe a couple of inches thick, no more.
And what was underneath was clay and huge boldness of flint stones. You could not dig a hole. So what we had to do, we had to employ a local farmer who came with a big digger, dug great big holes for us for these trees, and we bought tons of organic compost. We filled these holes with compost, and we planted our trees into that compost. That's how we started. We planted about a thousand trees on our land and lots of bushes created gardens, and then we got animals, and it's animals, particularly grazing animals, cows and habi virus, animals and pigs who created top soil on our planet in the first place. They are the creators of all life because all life on our planet begins in the soil and ends in the soil. If we lose top soil, there will be no life on planet earth.
The soil topsoil in our planet was created in the first place by enormous herds of herbivore animals in Africa that would be zebra and wildebeest and antelope in northern hemisphere. That will be the bison and the deer and the cows and the sheep and all the other animals and the goats. There were million heads, herds unless they move. And the way they interact with the grassland, the way they eat grasses and the way they move and the way they cover the land. As they move, they t trample whatever they haven't eaten, and they cover the whole land with their excrements. With manure and urine. And the urine and manure are the most precious things for our planet, for the soil, they create the microbial community in the soil because soil is a very complex microbial community, and it's the structure of that microbial community in a healthy soil under your feet is very similar to the structure of microbial community in your digestive system.
There are great parallels there. It's a microbiome of our planet. And every time I heard of cows or heard of other animals move across the land and then they come back in a few months, the top soil gets thicker and thicker and thicker. They have created in the first place and they continue creating it. There is a savory institute in the world. Alan Savory is a wonderful man who discovered how to graze cattle correctly in order to build top soil. With his methods of grazing, we can build enormous amounts of top soil on the planet in a matter of 20 years, 15, 20 years, capture all that carbon from the atmosphere and lock it in the soil because the soil is the major reservoir of carbon on our planet, and it is stored in the soil in the form of humus. That's the carbon polymer, very stable carbon polymer.
And humus is like a sponge. It absorbs huge amounts of water and holds water in the soil. It doesn't allow the soil to dry up. Dehydrate and hummus is created by microbes, and microbes are put into the soil by cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, turkeys. So we need more animals in order to restore our planet and save our planet. We need more animals because we need to create more top soil. And the thicker the top soil we create, the more hummus we create, the more water will be locked in there. So we'll be protected from droughts because a soil full of hummus, no matter what drought you have, it'll stay moist. Hummus will not allow that water to leave, and it's fertile and productive. And that's what we've been doing on my farm. We do not dig anything. We do not plow anything. We use no dig, gardening.
We have cows and we have goats, and we have pigs and chickens and turkeys and bees and what have you. And in a matter of 10 years, a piece of land that has been practically a desert without top soil has turned into paradise. And it provides us with all the food we need. And not only us, we have volunteers on our farm. We had probably more than a thousand volunteers in this last 10 years. They keep coming and they come from all over the world. They say young people and not so young people and children as well, families who want to produce their own food and they want to learn how to do that. Quite often there are people from cities who have no experience in gardening or having chickens or milking goats or anything like that. And we teach them all of these skills so they can go home then and start their own whole small holding and start producing their own food. And it's a wonderful transformational experience for everyone. We have beautiful transformations here. I'm now writing a book on this subject specifically for this audience, for people who want to leave cities and start living on land and producing their own food. In that book, I will describe everything with land, how to work with goats, how to work with pigs, how to work with chickens, how to work with gardens, how to grow vegetables, fruit, and so on.
Leafbox:
Dr. Natasha, who is your main form of resistance or criticism from, people who are in the mainstream, from other doctors, from traditional farmers. I'm curious, where do you find the most feedback or negative feedback to your ideas?
Dr Natasha:
I have no criticism. People ask me this question. I'm just all the people. The whole world absorbs this information like a sponge. They love it. And perhaps the reason for it is that I don't address people who don't need my information. When I discovered gaps, I knew in my bones that there is no point to go to my colleagues, to other medical doctors with this information. Absolutely no point whatsoever. They will not accept it. They will reject it. And it wasn't information besides they didn't need it. This information, I went with this information to people who need it badly needed it to Parents of children with learning disabilities, of children with allergies, children with asthma, eczema, diabetes type one, and juvenile arthritis and other chronic illnesses. And these parents, the mothers in particular, mothers are my heroes. They've grabbed this information and they've used it, and they've run across the world and they made this information available to everybody.
If you do that, if you work with love, basically everything you've got to give you, give with love to the very people who need it. They will be so grateful, so respectful, and they will carry that information and they will spread it and they will help you. But if you have some kind of professional ambition to become a hero amongst your profession, and instead of giving the information you've discovered to the people who need it, you go to your professional community and try to publish in some high ranking journal or something like that, expect lots of trouble because you're carrying information to the wrong place, to people who don't need it, don't want it, and who will feel threatened by that information? I've never done that, never. So I've never had any resistance. All I have from the universe is great help and respect and gratitude.
Leafbox:
And then Dr. Natasha, could you tell me a little bit more about the coach training program and how you're kind of empowering other practitioners in some of your ideas?
Dr Natasha:
I've been training medical practitioners for more than 10 years now, and in the last seven years, we've put this training online as the whole world went online gradually. So we have gaps training.com. It's a wonderful platform. Please visit it. We have many courses there for any need, for most needs that people may have. We have a course for medical practitioners, people who have prior training and already running clinics to learn about gaps and to learn how to use it effectively because it's very complex. It's a huge amount of knowledge that we've accumulated with my practitioners and people who graduate There are called Gaps practitioners, certified Gaps practitioners. Then we have a course for people who do not have prior training, but there are people who use the gaps nutritional protocol for themselves, for their families. They heal themselves from various illnesses, and through that healing journey, they've accumulated enormous amount of experience and they would love to share that experience with other people around the world.
So we train these people, we give them a qualification, we call them Certified Gaps Coaches, and they open clinics and they work with people and they're more hands-on people. They're actually the kind of people that can come to your house and cook for you and take you by the hand and deal with every day-to-day problems that you're going through and answer all your questions. So these are the gaps coaches. And then we have courses for families who would like to have a healthy baby who perhaps may already have another child with an illness who had bad experiences and want to make sure that their next child is healthy and vibrant. We have a course for those parents, or maybe they already have a baby and they want to put things right because the things are not going right for them with the baby. So that's a Gaps Baby course.
We have a course for families who have fussy eaters. Many children in this world just would not eat properly. They're addicted to processed carbohydrates usually and would not eat any proper meals. So we have a course run by fantastic practitioners who are very, very experienced, who will teach you how to pull your child out of those addictions and get your child to eat pretty much everything you put in front of your child to eat properly. So that's for the Fussy Mealtime Plan Management. It's called for Fussy Eaters. We have a course for people who are using animals, a very comprehensive animal course because animals are used for adults in the gaps. Nutritional protocol for people with constipation, for people with compaction in their bowel and other problems, it's very important to remove that compaction. So animals are used quite extensively and there's a lot of knowledge in there.
So we have a very good animal course. We have a course for people who are sensitive to electromagnetic pollution. We all live in a soup. We don't see it, but our wifis are working. Our mobile phones are working, internet is working. Human body is an electromagnetic being. It works on electricity and we live in the soup with all sorts of vibrations, which affect the way our bodies function. So there's quite a comprehensive course there, which will explain how to avoid these things and how to help you to recover from that sensitivity. Many people are sensitive in this world and they do not realize it. They do not know that they're sensitive to their mobile phones and wifi and other electromagnetic pollution in the environment. We have a course on farming, which is, that's Joel's course. That's a wonderful farmer, great visionary, and a person that's transforming farming in the world.
So we affiliated with his course. We have many other courses in there, so please go there and have a look. We also organize online conferences once a year in February. That's GAPS, online Gaps Online conference. We will have fantastic speakers and lots of new information for people. So I invite everyone to join us. You will find all the information about gaps Online conference, all gaps training.com on that platform, on that website, and there will be a link as well to Gaps Science Foundation. We started this foundation a bit more than a year ago now. We are putting the gaps concept on a scientific basis. We publishing, we've already published three studies in peer review journals and we are working on more studies so the scientific community of the world can have something to dig their teeth into, sink their teeth into, and to have a scientific basis to have some evidence as they call it.
Leafbox:
Yeah, I saw that you're working with Dr. Seneff from MIT, That's right.
Dr Natasha:
Dr. Seneff is one of the people on the team working with us, which is wonderful. We have a wonderful team of researchers. It's a charity. We've set it up as a charity, so we rely on support. So please support us for people who can support us. And my main website is gaps.me. There are many gaps websites out there because gaps is a global phenomenon. There are thousands and thousands of gaps practitioners working all over the world. Every one of them has a website and many people who have gone through the protocol have websites and blogs. So there's a lot of gaps. Information online. I've got only one website and that is Gaps Me, which has a lot of information and all the links to other websites and to my blog.
Leafbox:
And then Dr. Natasha, my last two questions are, is there anything you've really changed your mind on in the last few years? Like one topic or something that really, I don't know, something that just changed your mind recently. I'm curious on that. Something you believed before.
Dr Natasha:
We had quite a tumultuous few years, haven't we?
Leafbox:
Correct, yeah.
Dr Natasha:
Around the world. We had this amazing entertainment for two years is and that entertainment opened the eyes in many, many people on how the world works and what's happening in our world and what many people understood that whatever the mainstream is telling you, we live in an upside down world. And this is not a new idea. This comes from ancient Greek philosophers and from other philosophers over ages throughout the world that will live in an upside down world. So whatever the mainstream tells you, you have to turn it upside down and then you will see the truth.
So if the mainstream is telling you that we should all become vegetarian and vegan, turn it upside, you will see the truth. This propaganda comes from global corporations, and I've understood that actually that's a fact that I solidly learned with my farm. My farm has taught me that fact that on an organic natural farm where you don't cut any corners and you do everything honestly on an organic farm, regenerative farm, when you do everything with love, you do the best for the soil, the best for the animals, the best for the birds, the best for the whole ecosystem of the farm. And I realized the solid fact that an on an organic farm like that natural farm, the easiest thing to produce a meat, milk and eggs, you are busy one hour in the morning feeding the chickens, milking the animals, letting them on pasture, and you're busy one hour in the evening, again, feeding them and putting them out to bed the rest of the day is free.
You can even hold a full-time job having an organic farm. But when it comes to growing vegetables or any other crops, that's where the full-time hard labor is. It's hard to grow. Plant matter on an organic farm, the yield is completely unpredictable. You can do everything by the book and your carrots just don't grow and you don't know why. And next year you get lots of carrots but no cabbages. The previous year, the cabbages grow and every year is different. The weather is different, the environment, everything's different. So the yield is completely unpredictable. You never know what you will get. So running it commercially and trying to sell vegetables from an organic farm is very, very difficult to do without cutting corners and without introducing some industrial farming techniques into that. When it comes to the industrial agriculture with lots of machines and chemicals and hybrids and GMOs and the rest of it, it's easy for them to grow.
Plant matter. The scientists have worked out all the seeds and hybridization and chemicals and so on, and it works. They get the yield year after year, not the weeded amongst those plants on these fields, on the industrial fields, and they get the yield and they get their profits. So it's easy for them to grow. Huge amounts of plant matter, profitable, easy. But when it comes to animals to producing meat, milk, and eggs, that's what the big headache is. That's where it's unprofitable and difficult for industrial farming because animals and birds just don't comply with industrial model. They get sick and they die so expensive. Antibiotics have to be used, expensive steroids have to be used. Expensive bills come in all the time and the yield is not so good and it's just difficult for them. So the industrial agriculture wanted to get rid of animal husbandry for a long time.
They had a few goals with it, and now they have a real goal because they have invested heavily into synthetic meat, synthetic milk, and synthetic X. These things are already in supermarkets. They're growing them from cell culture. If you want to see how it's done, you can see on some videos on Google where they use the three D printing machines and they can print out of the cell culture a stake for you of rare, medium, rare with any amount of fat that you want. They can print fish for you, they can print anything for you on these three D printers, and you can buy that. You can order that and buy it. And these things are already in supermarkets. So now the agenda of the mainstream authorities is to get rid of animal husbandry. They're trying very hard and in preparations for all the synthetics, they have launched pro vegetarian propaganda.
Very powerful. And many young people in particular, emotional youngsters, teenagers, young teenagers fall for this propaganda because they use the very films from their own industrial farms where the animals are abused, eat appropriate commodity crops and live in appalling environments. They fill their own farms and then they show it to the young populations to put them more feeding meat. They would never show them a farm like mine or other regenerative, healthy natural farms where animals are healthy, happy, and loved, and live according to the way modern nature designed them to live on pasture, all animals and birds must be on pasture to be healthy, happy, and to thrive and to have a proper fulfilling life. So cows must be on pasture, goats must be on pasture, pigs must be on pasture. In fact, the most ideal environment for pigs is a forest. A forest, because they dig pigs, they root, they eat a lot of what they dig out.
They eat a lot of insects and grabs and worms and plant mat and grass. They eat a lot of grass. No animal, no bird in this. Chickens should be on pasture, turkeys should be on pasture. Geese, ducks, geese and ducks need wetlands to be happy and healthy because they need ponds. They need water as well as pasture. These birds, what the industrial agriculture does, they want to plow everything because their biggest source of profit is growing plants, growing commodity crops. They don't want to waste land on pastures. They want to plow all their pastures and grow their commodity crops. So they've taken all these birds and animals off pasture and locked them in prisons called cafo, confined animal factory operation, where these poor little creatures live on concrete, they never see the light of then never see sun, and they're fed commodity crops which are grown on their pastures.
They're fed grain and they're fed soya and chemicals and a mixture with chemicals. These creatures are not designed by modern nature to eat grain and soya grain and soil make them sick. They get sick, they will have inflammation. If you allow them to live a few months longer, they'll get cancer and they'll just die. They all have arthritis, they're all sick, and they give you sick meat and sick milk and sick eggs, and all of that goes into supermarkets for people. So industrial model of agriculture is something that in the future, humanity must abandon. It must be abundant. We must all eat from natural, regenerative, organic farms, and that means that we have to abandon supermarkets today as consumers in the cities and anywhere else, we must abandon supermarkets because everything on the shelves of supermarkets comes from industrial agriculture.
Food is information. Information carries vibration. What vibration, what information does food in the supermarket carry? It carries information of abuse, greed, suffering, and disease. How can that information give you good health? When you eat food, you eating information, you're putting electromagnetic vibrations into your body and your body will then act upon it and build its own structure from that information. When you buy food from a natural, organic farmer who loves his land, loves his animals, loves his chickens, loves his cows, and goats and gardens, those animals that meat, that milk, those eggs carry vibration of love. Nature's is a solidified love.
The Einstein's formula and physics, you probably know that that energy is mass multiplied by speed of vibration squared. That's the formula. So energy and mass, energy and matter are one and the same. It's just that the speed of vibration is different slightly. So every matter, every piece that of food that you can hold and it made out of matter is vibrating. The whole world is jittering and vibrating. Your body is jittering and vibrating, and it's the frequency of vibration that matters. Love has a very high frequency of vibration. When you eat meat from an animal that was loved and only new kindness and love, that piece of meat will bring into your body the vibration of love and only that vibration can bring healing and good health. So if you want good health for your family, for your children, for yourself, you have to abundance supermarkets.
I know how convenient they are, how comfortable they are. Go to your farmer's market on a weekend, speak to the farmers, get their contact details. Ask, can I visit your farm on a weekend? And on the weekend, throw your kids in the car, get your dog, get the whole family and go and have a lovely Saturday or Sunday visiting a wonderful farm. Have fun and have a look how the animals are kept, how the chickens are kept, how the land is served, and look in the eye of that farmer. Is this a good person? Can I trust this person? Is this a loving person? And see if there are any bags of chemicals lying about or any refrigerators for one other pharmaceuticals. So once you found a few farms like that, buy all your food from these farms. All it takes is just driving one day on a weekend and getting your weekly supply from these farms.
And if you talk to your friends and family in the city and create a small group, many farmers, when you've got 10 people ordering things from the farmer, the farmer will deliver into the city for you into one place. So in order to get really truly health giving food, all it takes is just getting organized a little bit of organization. And by doing that, you will meet wonderful people, you'll make good friends, and you will bring real good health and prosperity and thriving into your family. Your children will behave better, they'll be better able to learn and to function. They will be more intelligent. The whole family will function better.
Leafbox:
Dr. Natasha, to end, are you optimistic of the future or you sound quite positive? I'm just curious what motivates you each day to keep going?
Dr Natasha:
Of course I'm optimistic. I know that with everything we hear nowadays and everything we've learned during the entertainment, many people feel that the world is coming to an end, that something terrible is happening, but what in reality is happening that every human being is given the choice and no one's allowed to sit on a fence. You either that way or you're this way. You either join the communities of people who now are buying land, growing their own food, are homeschooling their children. We now have unprecedented number of parents who are homeschooling their children, and it's wonderful, absolutely wonderful. People are leaving mainstream education because it isn't what they want for their children. Quite right, true. People are living mainstream altogether because they're disappointed in the people who run the mainstream and in the way it is run altogether and they're learning. And every human being is a powerful creature.
We are very powerful every one of us, but there's only so much energy every one of us has. We are creators. We create our own reality and we create our own environment, and every one of us has only so much energy. Whatever you put that energy into, grows. If you put your energy into the negatives of this world, fighting them and arguing with them and complaining about them and appealing to God, wants to change something, that's the biggest waste of time and effort that anybody can launch upon. If you waste, then all your energies gone into that negative and that negative grows, gets bigger, more prevalent. But if you deprive them of your energy, completely ignore them and put all your divine energy that you have into something positive, into an alternative that you grow, that you want for yourself, that you want for your children, the kind of future you want, then that will grow.
And as it grows and flourishes and blossoms, it'll push all that negative out. It'll replace it, and that's what every one of us has to do. That's what every one of us has to think. What do I really want in this world? I know what I don't want, but I should not put my energy into that because I don't want it to grow. What do I really want? What do I want to put my energy in it and what do I want to create that is beautiful and wonderful for me, for my loved ones and for everybody else around? So I'm very positive.
Leafbox:
Great. Well, Dr. Natasha, I really appreciate your time. I align with many of your thoughts and your teachings and your work, and I commend you. I mean, the farm is the most beautiful thing and helping other parents and other people come to solutions to their health are very encouraging. So thank you.
Dr Natasha:
That's a pleasure. And thank you for your work. Thank you for spreading the word.
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V. Vale is the editor and founder of Search & Destroy and RE/Search, an influential figure in publishing who aims to produce enduring books that explore uncharted territories. His publications embody a blend of optimism, dark humor, and anthropological objectivity, all while maintaining a distinctiveness that appeals universally. Instead of relying on academic jargon or unnecessary shock value, Vale prioritizes conveying intricate details with clarity, without resorting to gratuitous sensationalism.
I’ve been a fan of Re/Search for many years and we connected over Zoom along with long term life and business partner Marian Wallace to discuss interviewing techniques, body language, agenda, publications, keeping inquisitive and open, the Financial Times, finding the surreal in everything and parenting tips.
Thanks for listening and reading.
Discover Re/Search Publications
Instagram: @Vale_Research
Opening Song “Let’s Go Walking” - V. Vale piano and vocals. Produced by Marian Wallace
Full Transcript @ Leafbox.com
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Erik Millstone is an Emeritus Professor of Science Policy in the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex. He gained a first degree in Physics, followed by three postgraduate degrees in Philosophy.
His expertise centers on the role of scientific expertise and evidence in managing technological risks, especially those arising in the food chain.
Currently retired but still active in doctoral advising and public commentary. We connected to discuss food safety, regulation, questioning authority, Iran, Brexit, and his past as a scientist, and researcher.
Connect with Professor Millstone
Full transcript @ Leafbox.com
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Aaron Moulton is an American curator based out of Denmark. Formally with Gagosian Galleries, and other international galleries he is interested in secrets of creativity, the evolution of art, perception, and roots his curatorial practice in anthropology, journalism, innovation, folklore etc.
I first became interested in Aaron’s work finding his massive, fascinating and riddle like exposure of the Soros Centers for Contemporary Art. We discussed this project but also survey some major curations over about 20 years to understand the arc of his exploration.
Major Works / Projects Discussed
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The Influence Machine (PDF)
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Each Memory Recalled Must Do Some Violence To Its Origins @ Undisclosed Location Utah 2012
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AMERICANAESOTERICA
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Trito Ursitori
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Homage to Hollis Benton
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Homage Benton Interview
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Seeing Eye Awareness
Connect with Aaron Moulton
Photos / Videos / Images Courtesy of Aaron Moulton
Full Transcript @ Leafbox.com
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The Times of the UK called Tao Lin “a daring, urgent voice for a malfunctioning age,"
I agree. Tao Lin is an exciting original acclaimed voice trying who is trying to make make sense of the personal and external confusion.
He’s an American novelist, poet, essayist, short-story writer and artist. He’s published several novels, and works of non fiction. He has published several books, including the acclaimed novels 'Taipei,' 'Shoplifting from American Apparel,' and 'Leave Society.' Tao is also the editor of MuuMuu House, which he founded in 2008. Currently living on the Big Island in Hawaii, Tao continues to push the boundaries of contemporary literature with his thought-provoking and innovative work.
We connect today to explore his current work on his body mind, his current writing, his views on spirituality, daily routines, the rural vs urban, how he navigates the tension between mainstream and alternative narratives, gate keeping, poisoning the well, on relationships, and how Tao continues to push the boundaries of contemporary thought with original innovative work.
I’ve been following Tao’s work for over a decade so this was a treat to connect.
Connect with Tao Lin @ http://www.taolin.us
Full Transcript @ Leafbox.com
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Environmental Toxicologist who originally worked on acid rain, metal pollution, water quality, air quality and related matters to shift later in her career to focus primarily in electromagnetic radiation, radio frequency radiation, electromagnetic fields, dirty electricity, and work on those who are electrically hypersensitive.
Dr Magda Havas is Associate Professor of Environmental & Resource Studies at TrentUniversity where she teaches and does research on the biological effects of environmental contaminants. Dr. Havas received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, completed Post-Doctoral research at Cornell University, and taught at the University of Toronto before going to Trent University in Peterborough, Canada.
We spoke in detail about her work, research, openness in science, her experience in science and policy, advising the medical community and more.
Connect with Dr Havas
Full Transcription @ Leafbox.com
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Andrew is a catholic, a writer, and a rural revivalist advocating for a traditional lifestyle.
We talked about his online handle shagbark, about his experience living nomadically across the US for 5 years, the collapse of the western civilization, degeneracy and escape, rumspringer , the dark night of the soul, finding optimism in building local communities, rural vs urban life, the Amish, opportunities in the future and the ultimate importance of land, nature, and spirituality for personal fulfillment.
Connect with Andrew on Twitter @Shagbark or via his Substack
Full Transcript @ Leafbox.com
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Thomas Kloepfer and his wife run Pitchfork Farms, an eco-friendly farm located on Mukaishima in Onomichi, Hiroshima. The farm cultivates seasonal fruits, vegetables, and herbs on a thriving hillside market garden and orchard overlooking the Seto-Inland sea. As regenerative farmers, the farm aims to maintain natural cycles and reduce the use of off-farm resources by producing their own energy, seeds, and fertilizers. In addition to being a sustainable farm, Pitchfork Farms is also an off-grid energy producer and rainwater and well water harvester. The farm is home to sheep, chickens, and ducks, and is dedicated to connecting the community to sustainable farming practices while celebrating the land and people.
We spoke in detail about his past, his goals, farming, and future.
Transcript @ Leafbox.com
Connect with Pitchforkfarms.jp
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In November 2022, Marek Lehocky and his swimming partner Dr. Steven Minaglia completed a challenging, staged circumnavigation swim around the island of Oahu. This impressive accomplishment marks the first unassisted circumnavigation of the island on record.
Marek Lehocky, originally from Slovakia and now residing in Honolulu, is the CEO of Kreston ProWorks, a business support services company based in Tokyo, Japan.
During our conversation, we delved into various topics such as his upbringing, love for the ocean, the importance of goal-setting, transnational business experience, breathing and perseverance, and his insight into determination.
Marek brings a unique cultural lens to the conversation, which is invaluable in understanding and navigating the complexities of the modern world. His multicultural background and transnational experience provide him with a nuanced perspective in understanding and navigating the complexities of the modern world.
Connect with Marek and his Oahu Circumnavigation Swim
Full Transcript @ Leafbox.com
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Interview: Arturo Tafoya
Maybe you’ve heard of Cicada 3301. If not its a mysterious and highly secretive organization that emerged in 2012 and over several years posted on various internet forums and websites, puzzled that induced steganography, cryptography and other forms of esoteric knowledge. Some believed it to be a recruitment tool for highly skilled linguists, computer programmers, cryto-graphers.
The puzzles led participants on a months-long scavenger hunt around the world, with clues hidden in various locations such as books, music, and artwork. Those who successfully completed the puzzles were believed to have been contacted by Cicada 3301 and offered the opportunity to join the organization, although the true nature and purpose of the group remain unknown.
Cicada 3301 has been the subject of much speculation and investigation over the years, with some suggesting it may be a government agency, a private organization, or even an elaborate prank or social experiment. However, the true identity and intentions of Cicada 3301 remain shrouded in mystery.
I however had the pleasure of speaking with artist and researcher Arturo Tafoya who was recruited to create art assets for Cicada 3301 and was engaged actively with a group that ultimately was likely a splinter faction of Cicada 3301 in 2017.
We spoke in detail about his experience, the current state of Cicada, disinformation, psychological operations, hyperstition , QAnon, other internet lore and ultimately sense making.
Arturo is currently working on a book and a documentary. His art was used in a VICE and HBO documentary on QAnon and I thought this was a good discussion and introduction to a complex information world. Hopefully you can take his advise to remain emotionally disconnected in your own sense making.
Researcher and Artist Arturo Tafoya
He archives videos ConspiracyDistillery.com or on Youtube
Read transcript and notes @ leafbox.com
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Aaron Fletcher is a nomadic farmhand and subsistence dairy shepherd who lives currently in the Pacific Northwest. He lives a "home-free" lifestyle that involves connecting with local food sources and working towards local food sustainability. As a voluntarily "home-free" activist, Aaron focuses on local solutions to world problems.
In Aaron's words, being "home-free" is not the same as being homeless or housed. Instead, it is the third side of a coin. He believes that there have always been people who have possessions and those who do not, but being "home-free" means being a "have-not-want."
Aaron's experiments in minimizing his ecological footprint, connecting with local food sources, and building communities are inspiring and educational. His lifestyle offers one model for surviving and thriving in a post-collapse society. We can all learn from his experiences and apply them to our own lives, whether we choose to follow in his footsteps or not.
Thank you for listening and reading.
More information from Aaron @ 123homefree.org
Full Transcription @ Leafbox.com
Credits : Photos from Aaron Fletcher
AI Transcription done via Whisper Library
Musical intro in podcast features sound samples from
- Tom Skinner - The Day After Tomorrow * JJJJJerome Ellis - Fountain #3
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Yannick Dauby is a French sound artist and field recorder based in Taiwan. He also works in sound designs for film. He also produces audio documentary as well as electroacoustic music compositions.
Dauby’s works are inspired by ethnography, amphibian conservation, stories from the forests & mountains and marine biology. He collaborates with communities and individuals in Hakka villages and Indigenous territories of Taiwan.I find his soundscapes inspiring and his work fascinating. I recently had the pleasure and honor of engaging his work more deeply via an interview.
I recommend listening to the soundcape above that he provided as well as the additional ones below a fuller immersive experience. This was a pleasure to edit and explore. I hope you enjoy it as well.
Please read the accompany interview and listen to additional soundscapes + photography for a full experience.
Full interview @ www.leafbox.com/interview-yannick-dauby/
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Dr Jose L. Domingo is the Distinguished Professor (Emeritus) of Toxicology and Environmental Health at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, School of Medicine.
We spoke in detail about his interest and history in toxicology, regulation, concerns regarding the lack of study into the potential side effects of COVID 19 vaccines, regulatory frameworks, the peer review process, and more.
Dr Domingo's research focuses on, among other topics, the potential human health effects of environmental and food contaminants.
Dr Domingo is the editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Environmental Research and was until recently the editor-in-chief of Food and Chemical Toxicology.
Prof. Domingo is founder and director of the Laboratory of Toxicology and Environmental Health and Tecnatox (www.tecnatox.cat). He is author or co-author of 680 papers (Scopus) published in international peer-reviewed journals. According to Google Scholar, these papers mean over 30,200 citations with a current h-index of 86. He has managed an important number of projects for public administrations and private companies. He has directed more than 40 PhD theses. Prof. Domingo is a Highly Cited Researcher and he belongs to various international scientific societies such as the Society of Toxicology USA, INA, SEBM, etc.
Full Transcript @ Leafbox.com
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Dr Cook is a board certified psychiatrist in private practice. He is the founding director of Beyond Mental Health, a Honolulu, Hawaii practice combining traditional psychiatry with alternative care models using nutritional supplements, nootropics, TMS therapy, medical cannabis, ketamine, to empower patients. Dr Cook is also and advisor to the Clarity Project, a lobbying effort to improve medical access to psychadelics in the state.
We spoke in detail about his general practice, marijuana, ketamine, psychadelics and alternative modalities, societal breakdown, parenting and the role of technology in today’s mental health climate.
Full Transcript @ Leafbox.com
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Remedial Literacy Specialist, Author, and Waldorf Literacy Curriculum Advisor
While at first the following interview might appear only to be of interest and highly specific to the world of Waldorf educators, parents and students - rest assured that I can recommend it to a broader community. Valuable lessons and questions arise from the conversation with Jennifer Milizer-Kopperal including but not limited to the role of alternative education, the philosophy of Rudolph Steiner, the role of technology in education and learning, the holistic importance of literacy, multi-lingual environments, child development and other related broad topics etc.
Jennifer Milizer-Kopperal is a literacy remedial specialist, author and educator developing and improving literacy programs in Waldorf Education.
She is the co-author along with Janet Langley of the The Roadmap to Literacy: A Guide to Teaching Language Arts in Waldorf Schools Grades 1 through 3. The guide provides clear guidance on teaching literacy in the early grades. It builds off the work of Rudolf Steiner, founder of Waldorf education, by adding in material that is specific to the English language as well as modern research in literacy skills.
She is also also author of the sequel Continuing the Journey to Literacy: A Guide to Teaching Language Arts in Waldorf Schools Grades 4 through 8 Students in this collection then dive into the subject blocks and learn about English, history, geography, natural science, and more.
Jennifer’s two books form a complete program for teaching language arts in Waldorf Schools grades 1–8. She calls this program Renewal of Literacy. Jennifer is also the creator of www.renewalofliteracy.com.
Learn more @
https://renewalofliteracy.com/
Full Transcript @ Leafbox.com
Also recommend reading Jennifer's post interview notes that are available within the interview transcription.
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For this week’s conversation I had the pleasure of learning from Brian Patterson, a Cayman Islands based, Bermudian corporate offshoring expert, crypto council and lawyer for Dentons.
With the entire FTX implosion currently occurring I thought it would be prudent to speak with someone at the heart of the nexus between crypto, the Caribbean, international offshoring, regulation and international banking.
For those not caught up with the FTX scandal - I recommend reading before listening or reading the below interview.
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“Sadly, FTX” Excellent Summary by Zvi Mowshowitz
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A Grand Unified Theory of the FTX Disaster - by Mathew Crawford - For a more ‘conspiratorial take on the implosion but equally important summary
Brian Patterson is also my first cousin. He is originally Bermudian but is based currently in the Cayman Islands. He is also a certified executive coach and trainer, an RYT-200 yoga and meditation teacher, and an avid scuba diver.
Full Transcription @ Leafbox.com
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Rob Auten is a video game writer whose writing credits include Gears of War: Judgment (cowritten with Tom Bissell) as well as titles like Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. He is also the CEO and co-founder of Hexagram, an immersive “ambient experience” studio focused on immersive game experiences that blend reality and fiction in innovative ways. I caught up with Rob after a trip home to Dubai where he is currently based. We discussed his youth, his interest in narrative, toys, play, video games, VR, managing a studio and narrative.
—
Podcast Notes / Full transcription @ Leafbox.com
@5 Min - Childhood / College Experiences
@21 Min: Shifting into Hollywood / Music Video Production
@27: Shifting into Video Game Writing / Gears of War
@32: The Writer’s Room Experience
@38: Narrative Structures of Game Design
@44: Narrative Game Rails / Narrative Mechanics
@52: Writing the Kilo Squad: The Survivor's Log
@56: Dubai Mall Gear of War Laser Tag
@58: Why did you start Hexagram?
@59 Cadillac Immersive Installation
@1:02: Role of Ai in Game Development
@1:10: Discussion on VR
@1:17 Dubai / Remote Work
@1:20 Comparative Game Literature
—
Full transcription @ Leafbox.com
More on Hexagram
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Seneca Scott was so generous to give me an hour of his time to walk through his background, his philosophical framework, his vision for Oakland and give me what he call’s the “Green Pill”. He’s running as an independent for Mayor of Oakland, California in 2022.
Full transcript @ www.leafbox.com/interview-seneca-scott/
Connect with Seneca Scott @Seneca4Mayor
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Gail Fuller practices no-till crop farming and cattle grazing in Eastern Kansas.He also runs with his wife Lynette Miller, the Fuller Field School, a near decade long effort to connect and educate farmers, ranchers, researchers and community leaders to share ideas, innovate and build relationships in a holistic way. I was lucky to connect with Gail to discuss his past, holistic improvement, regenerative farming, connecting to food and rebuilding communities...
Full Transcript @ Leafbox.com
Connect with Fuller Farms
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Zachary Smith is an ordained Zen priest based out of San Francisco. We connected over a discussion politics, life, Zen, parenting, psychadelics and more.
Full Transcription @ https://www.leafbox.com/interview-zachary-smith/
Connect with Zach @ http://stupahead.com/
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Kana Chan is a Canadian living in Kamikatsu, Shikoku which is Japan’s first “zero waste” village in rural Japan. She records her daily life at her substack at Tending Gardens and runs inow (いのう）an educational homestay program that connects visitors with longer work stays in Kamikatsu along with another two partners. We spoke in detail about her homestay program, tourism, the urban vs rural, dating, language learning, dialects, zero waste and more.
Full Transcript available on Leafbox.com
Connect with Kana on her substack Tending Gardens or apply to be part of the inow program.
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Ran Prieur is a philosopher, writer, blogger, and is well known for writing on collapse, society, psychology, freedom, drugs and consciousness. We spoke about these topics and more.
Leafbox: Ran, thanks so much for taking some time. I've been a reader of your essays for many, many years... I've watched some of your documentaries, but I think I get a sense of who you are, but if you were to introduce yourself to someone new who's never read one of your works, what's your first kind of statement, usually, on who you are, what you're into.
Ran:Oh, I don't know. I've been doing a blog for about 20 years. I used to write about ... I guess I'd say I used to write aboutcritique of civilization... Now I'm writing more about psychology and metaphysics and less about politics and society, but I'm still kind of interested in that stuff. I'm writing a novel. It's going very slowly. I just like to think about things and write about things.
Leafbox:So maybe we can start there since you're in Seattle and you're more interested in the psychology. I was watching the short documentary about you, and I think a lot of ... I wouldn't call you a ... I guess not a prepper, but a doomer, but there's kind of a sense of a meaning of crisis in the West. And I'm curious where you think that comes from?Ran:The sense ... where does the sense of crisis come from?
Leafbox:Yeah. The meaning of crisis in the West, possibly.
Ran:The meaning of crisis, like what meaning do people get out of thinking there's a crisis? Or ... I mean, I can talk a little bit about why people might ... what sense of meaning people might get out of ... I mean, I think there is a crisis and I think there's a lot of things that are going on right now that can't keep going the way they're going. And I used to more of a doomer. I still think that there's going to be a lot of big changes. I think we're in the middle right now. We're in the middle of a slow collapse and people get a sense of meaning about ... well, I think that's part of the reason that we're in a slow collapse, is people want to be part of something.
People want to feel like they're participating in something that they feel good about. And society is not doing a very good job of giving that feeling to people.
So they get into other things and other movements, some of which might destabilize the system that we've got. People might ... I mean, it's fun to imagine that everything is going to collapse and that I have these special skills other people don't have that let me do better other people. And a lot of people think that way, I might say the intersection of meaning and collapse.
Leafbox:And where do you think ... why do you think society's failing to give meaning to Western, kind of modern people?
Ran:Why do I think it's failing? Well, you can see this and a lot of things where something starts out ... when something starts out, people are excited about it and then it just builds up all kinds of cruff, it builds up lots of stuff that's just added on and it's easy to add stuff and hard to take stuff away. There's an important book that I haven't read, but everybody talks about it, The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter, and he just talks about how complexity ... societies keep adding complexity, incrementally. It's easy to add complexity incrementally and hard to remove it incrementally.
So they just tend to build up more and more complexity and then lose a bunch of complexity all of a sudden.
So, you know, you could look at how much more expensive it is now to build things than it used to be. If you want to build a tunnel or a new subway, even accounting for inflation, it's way more expensive, and nobody is sure exactly why that is, but I think it's just that society gets more complex and the more complex it gets, the more clunky it gets.
And part of that is the ability to provide meaning. I think ... I can go on a bit of a tangent. I'm optimistic about the unconditional basic income. If we get something like that, then ... what people want is they want to do things. The goal for society should be a society that builds itself upward from what people enjoy doing. And ... it's hard to do that. And a society might originally build itself upward for what people enjoy doing. And then people are just doing it to go through the motions and not really enjoying it, like in ancient Egypt, the first great pyramid was better than the second. The second was better than the third. I think it's because for the first great pyramid, people were excited about like, Oh, that's cool. We're going to build a pyramid. And then they built it, and they're like, Oh man, another pyramid. But that was all they knew how to do.
So I'm just trying to triangulate this whole idea of why society starts to feel less meaningful as it goes on longer.
Leafbox:Do you think other civilizations have the same decadence of collapse, like Asian or Russian or Middle Eastern or developing?
Ran:Yeah. I think the same dynamic happens all over the world. I don't think this is uniquely a Western problem. It is a modern problem and there's never been so much complexity as there is right now. And just so much ... so many things we have to keep track of, and not all that stuff is going to be fun. And so it's going to be tedious, but I don't think this is uniquely Western at all. I think it's just modern. It has to do with the ... humans are always going to try, humans have been trying a lot of things that we've never tried before and we tend to mess it up and try, do it the wrong way a bunch of times until we get it right. That's happening right now all over the world with the internet and social media and lots of technologies that we haven't worked out how to work them well yet we're working them in a way that's not satisfying.
Leafbox:So do you know who Balaji is? He's that South Indian American kind of venture capitalist, philosopher, writer, Bitcoin guy. And he's modeled the future based on what he considers three contemporary forces, that being what he calls the CCP model, which is the Chinese kind of authoritarian state versus what he calls the NYT model, New York times, future model, where it's kind of a progressive eco kind of authoritative state, versus the BTC model, which is the Bitcoin kind of decentralized, utopian, anarchistic model. Peter Thiel also has a similar model, but he calls it sharia law versus the CCP model, versus eco hyperkind of ... progressivism, like European, or ...
I'm curious if you're in Seattle and Washington, and you're kind of worried about collapse, what's your future image of what is going to collapse and what's the future? Is it a Mad Max image? Is it a CCP kind of China image? Sharia law image? I'm just curious what you think. Use the term "long emergency," kind of the long slow collapse, but I'm curious what you see the future as.
Ran:Well, I have to break it down into different things. I don't ... and one of those things is technology, and another one of those things is the economy. And if I could just start with those, I think economic collapse is inevitable and there's going to be ... the economy we've got is based on perpetual growth, exponential growth, and there's no way we can keep having exponential growth. I think we're probably actually already done with the age of exponential growth and they're just kind of counting things that they shouldn't count to try to argue that ... economists are trying to create the illusion that we still have exponential growth and we don't. But we're going to have to figure out a way to live without that. So there's going to be all kinds of economic troubles.
And technology, my latest thinking on that is it's not going to be monolithic or global. It's going to be different everywhere. There's going to be really advanced ... I mean, technological innovations and ventures are going to continue. There's going to be lots of cool stuff and materials, and lots of questionable stuff, and AI, I mean, it's exciting stuff, but dangerous stuff. There's going to be lots of cool technological stuff and dangerous technological stuff continue to happen all through this. But in other places it's going to totally go to hell. There might be some neighborhoods that are Mad Max-like, but it's not going to be on a global scale.
Yeah, that's all I can think of right now. I mean, I don't really know much about China at all. It's such a big subject that I haven't really looked into it, but they're going to be in trouble because their system is also based on perpetual growth, and Americans continue to buy more things than the Chinese are making and they have their own troubles with the limits of authoritarianism.
Leafbox:You ... going to limits of authoritarianism. I used to be more of a fan of the concept of UBI, but I think the whole last two years of COVID have made me very nervous about UBI, and the potential of UBI being connected to state requirements. I'm just curious if you have any kind of fears of UBI being limited to authoritarian aspects?
Ran:I don't think ... the best thing would be not to have a UBI, but just have everything necessary be free, but that's really hard to pull off in practice. So I think I see the UBI as a transition from more of more of a top-down economy to more of a bottom-up economy where people can ... if people's basic needs are taken care of, then they can work more for quality of life and less for money. But yeah, I-
Leafbox:Ran, my fear is let's say you live in Singapore, a modern technocratic state, and you get your UBI, a thousand Singaporean dollars a month, and then they start requiring you, if you didn't get the latest booster, Oh, we saw you spit on the ground once.
Ran:Oh, yeah.
Leafbox:There's a lot of carrots and sticks associated with the UBI.
Ran:Then it's not unconditional, is it? Then it's a conditional basic income and that's not good. It's got to be something everyone gets, I think.
Leafbox:So your definition is unconditional. I didn't hear that.
Ran:Yeah, that's what the "U" is, unconditional. Everybody. I mean ... and I see you're right, that's a real danger that they're going to do that and they're going to call it unconditional though really it is conditional. I mean, you're probably right. That's going to happen in some places and to some extent, so then the challenge is to try to keep it ... try to make sure that they can't take it away for things like that. For any reason, really. I mean, I think should everyone should get it.
Leafbox:Have you heard of central bank digital currencies?
Ran:Yeah, that sounds ... yeah, I don't really, that's not really something I follow, but ... yeah, I don't really know much about that.
Leafbox:It's just a way to create debt mechanisms. Instead of the central treasuries creating money and then giving it to banks, they would give it directly to the end user via an app. So the digital one in China has that.
Ran:Okay.
Leafbox:But the problem is then they can have negative inflation or turn off your cash based on whatever they do. So if you ... in China, "Oh, you said the word Tiananmen," and then they'll just turn off your cash. So something similar is happening in the US with like if you say anything wrong on PayPal, then they'll just turn off your PayPal account. Or if we saw that in ... you remember in Canada with the truckers, they got their bank accounts turned off, and things like that.
Ran:Yeah. I mean, that's a danger. They could totally do that. I mean, there's a constant struggle. It's never going to end, the struggle for people to be able to live in a way that they enjoy living and the struggle between that and the other desire that people have when they have power to leverage that power and get more power. And we're never going to be done with that struggle. We're just going to have to ... I think we're less willing, humans as a whole are less willing to see people starve and die from lack of having necessities. I think in practice as it works out like that, there's going to be the people who don't obey or whatever are going to live worse.
Leafbox:So that's interesting how you said ... do you think you have a tendency ... I believe you're kind of in the underground and kind of counterculture always, but how do you maintain that freedom? That kind of philosophy of freedom?
Ran:I'm not sure. Could you phrase that another way? I'm not sure exactly what you're asking.
Leafbox:I'm curious how do you keep free in terms of your thoughts or actions against a state or a group that might be against those freedoms?
Ran:How do I personally?
Leafbox:Yeah.
Ran:Well, I've just been lucky. I've been lucky that I have enough money that I don't have to have a job. That's how I do it. And I don't spend a lot of money. I try to live frugally so that the money I have will last the rest of my life. But in general, people just have to find some way to make it through, there's going to be ... there's a lot of niches. There's a lot of ... people just have to find a niche. And I mean, I don't know, I'm starting to veer off into trying to give advice to people who I don't know anything about, but I'll just say that yeah, for me, I've just been lucky. I bought a house in Spokane when the market was low and sold it when the market was high. And I got the money from that.
Leafbox:Ran, I was going to ask you where do you ... just maybe in terms of freedom, where do you see the counterculture now?
Ran:Where do I see the counterculture now?
Leafbox:Yeah.
Ran:In terms of freedom? I'm not sure exactly. I mean, there's always going to be cultures and countercultures and freedom is such a loaded word. But ...
before I talk about freedom, if I were to define freedom, I like to define, I like to say the most fundamental freedom is the freedom to do nothing. And all other freedoms come from the freedom to do nothing. If you don't have the freedom to do nothing, you don't have the freedom to do anything. It's like the void from which everything is created. It's like, I've got nothing to do, we have nothing to do, then you can figure out what you really want to do.
So for me, that's the basis of freedom. And the word freedom gets thrown around a lot, and this is ... when people talk about freedom, sometimes they're talking about power, like, okay, you're driving your car and somebody cuts you off. That to you, it feels like power. They've exercised power over you by cutting you off. To them, it feels like freedom. They get to go wherever they want. So that's the constant trade off of freedom versus power. And a goal of a society should be to have as much freedom as we can. And as little power, people having power over other people as we can.
Leafbox:Interesting. And then Ran, right now what kind of ... maybe ... I've followed some of your zine work and I've seen the development of your novel. What kind of other things are you interested in right now? Could be anything, technology, lifestyle, baking, anything?
Ran:The ... I've been ... my latest obsession, one of my favorite motivational quotes is from the filmmaker John Waters, who said "Life is nothing if you're not obsessed." So I just like to get obsessed with little things. And I've been obsessed lately with hits of the seventies, believe it or not. I grew up in the seventies and I remember a lot of songs from then. I've just been going back and re-listening to a lot of those songs I remember from the seventies and making playlists. So that's my latest little obsession, but yeah, you mentioned baking. I'm doing ... I'm starting to make pasta now, which is surprisingly not that hard, to do homemade pasta. It takes more time than using pre-made pasta, but it's not hard and it's a lot better. So that's another little thing I'm doing.
Leafbox:Are you still interested in the occult, and pan-psychism, and some of those-
Ran:Totally. Oh, totally. Yeah. Yeah. I'm totally ... I mean, it's been a while since I've read any books on that stuff, but I'm always interested in woo-woo stuff. Yeah. In models of reality, other than materialism, and ... just all kinds of weird stuff.
Leafbox:And then where does that interest in the woo-woo come from?
Ran:I don't know where it comes from. It's something that's always been there. I just always like ... I like to see the cracks, I like to look beyond, I like to see things that are not working the way they should and are ... it's hard to explain it. That's not quite how I say it. What is it exactly? I mean, it's just ... it's newness. It's novelty. It's the world's supposed to be this way in terms of description of reality. And then you see something that doesn't fit, and wow. What is that? Maybe let me follow this thread and see where it leads.
And there's the idea that maybe outside of this I mean it's the whole, what the movie The Matrix points to, that the reality we see is not the real reality. And the real reality is more interesting. I wonder if it comes down to a kind of boredom, I don't know. You want-go ahead.
Leafbox:I think he wonders ... you have a lot of writing about psychedelics, and I think that always opens up questioning of reality. And I'm just curious if that has an overlap there, or-
Ran:You know, I've used psychedelics. I'm actually watching that Michael Pollan TV show, How to Change Your Mind. And I read his book, and something I noticed about his show, How to Change Your Mind—they have all these psychedelic trip reports and every single trip report is better than any trip I've ever had or anyone I know has ever had. They make it seem like every time you do psychedelics, you go off in another universe and you explore all your past traumas and you come back a changed person. And I'm afraid people are going to get their hopes up too much from watching that.
But I still think ... the insights that I've got from psychedelics are not that earth shaking, but they really helped me appreciate nature more. That's my favorite thing to do. I mean, I haven't done ... actually haven't done psychedelics in quite a while. I haven't done a large dose in a while, but when I do, I always like to go out and walk in nature and I just appreciate a lot more the beauty of ... well, when I'm speaking carefully, I don't call it nature. I call it the non-human made world. And compared to the non-human made world, the human made world looks pretty clunky and ugly, but we have a lot of room to do it better.
Leafbox:What do you think about the kind of democratization of psychedelics?
Ran:Oh, yeah, I mean look, they're not ... there's some problems. They're not completely miraculous, but I think it's overall good that more and more people are using them. And I think overall that's going to be good for society. It's not automatically going to make you a better person to use psychedelics. And a lot of people are going to use too many and fry their brains. But overall I'm in favor of more and more people using psychedelics. And I think it's going to cause some interesting changes in the world. It's inevitable.
Leafbox:Going back to the occult and ... I think on one podcast I heard you were talking about, I think biblo ... I've heard the term-
Ran:Bibliomancy, yeah.
Leafbox:Are you still using that, or how is that?
Ran:I do. It's a fun thing to do. It's not ... it's kind of like a parlor trick where you don't know exactly how it works and the way ... I guess, after I wrote about it, I found out that the normal way the people use bibliomancy is to open a book, you open a book at random, you riffle the pages, you put your finger down, and the way most people do it is they're looking for a phrase or a sentence. And that's not how I do it. I like to look to pull out a single word. So I use a dictionary, or ... I recommend a thesaurus to beginners because it's more simpler answers, but I use a dictionary. I just flip it on. I might be starting to write and I'm like, Let me have an idea. I say, Give me a seed crystal for what I'm going to write about today, and our starting point. And I put my finger down and there's a word. And surprisingly often whatever word I land on either fits the question or it's helpful.
So yeah, that's something I enjoy doing. And it's something that's helpful. And I have to be careful talking about it because you can ... if people get in trouble, if you do it too much, you can really get into a bad mental state where every time you need to make a decision, you go, I mean, it could be bibliomancy, it could be tarot, it could be whatever you're doing. You could get in a pattern of relying on it too much or taking it too seriously. So I have to do all these disclaimers, but if you don't get all wide-eyed and goggle-eye about it, if you just say, Oh, I'll do this fun thing and it's going to help me, then I think it can help. I Find it helpful. Yeah.
Leafbox:Do you have any religious practices, Ran?
Ran:No. I mean, religious is a ... that's something I write about, is religious is a hard word to ... it's a tricky word to define, but I guess you could say bibliomancy is a religious practice, but I was raised Catholic and I went to Catholic church and at the time I did not like it. And I don't go to church now, but looking back, I kind of appreciate the epic spirituality of Catholicism, how it really gives a sense of a world beyond this world that's really epic and beautiful.
And I know there's ... the word religion points to a lot of things. And some of those things are harmful, and some of them are necessary. One of the things it points to is just community. It's like people being with a group of people who think the same way, and that's always going to be that. And the challenge, if you're choosing that group of people, is to make sure they're not thinking in a way that's damaging or that's veering off from reality, so-
Leafbox:Are you agnostic, or atheist, or what's your spiritual belief system?
Ran:I mean, it's pretty much what anyone who's done psychedelics says, is that mind is more fundamental than matter. There is a universal ... I mean, I don't use the word God, because it ... sometimes I use the word God cause it's a really convenient word, but I don't want to give anyone the idea that I believe in a human-shaped sky father deity. That's a silly idea, and I think it's on the way out as more people use psychedelics and as the patriarchal culture, hopefully, the patriarchal culture is going to decline. And when people think about the absolute universal, they're not going to think about some old man. They're going to think about something that's way beyond what we can understand, but we see a little sliver of the universal.
So I guess I would say ... I wouldn't say I'm a religious or a ... I wouldn't say an atheist because that kind of implies ... that implies materialism, belief that the matter's final reality. I don't like to say I'm religious cause that implies belief in a sky father deity. But I believe in a universal consciousness that we are all a part of. And there's all kinds of things about reality that we can't understand from here.
Leafbox:Do you think there are ... that universal force is only good or are there evil forces, or-
Ran:A quote I like is that, it contains ... call it the universal, call it God, whatever, "It embraces all opposites." So it includes absolutely everything. So there's good in it, there's evil in it. I think evil ... have you ever see the movie Time Bandits? It's one of my favorite movies. It's like an early Terry Gilliam film, and there's this bit in Time Bandits where they run into God, the Supreme Being, and they ask ... this little kid asks God, "Why is there evil?" And God says, "Oh, I forget. But it seems to me it has something to do with free will."
So I think ... one thing I like to imagine is ... people imagine you're going to die and you're going to go to heaven. What if we're already in heaven right now? And we don't know it because we've forgotten certain things. We've wandered off into a bad neighborhood of heaven. And if heaven is heaven, it has to include the possibility to ... oh man, there's been some smoke in the air lately. Very smokey. Wow. The air doesn't look very smokey, but I'm getting these coughs. Let me see if I can go inside and see if it helps.
I forgot what I was talking about, let's see, I was talking about the idea that if we're already in heaven.
Leafbox:Correct. Yeah, in the neighborhoods, heaven.
Ran:Yeah. This could be a bad neighborhood of heaven. And we're just trying to find our way back into a good neighborhood, or ... there's this famous question, can God make a rock so big he can't lift it? Or can God make a burrito so hot that he can't eat it? And you could say that, can the universal consciousness forget that it is the universal consciousness? And that's a common insight that people have on psychedelics, that ... that's like a cliche. Oh, we are all God. I think that's basically right, that there is a universal consciousness that divided itself up, or duplicated itself into all of us, and beyond that, it's really hard to say what's going on.
Leafbox:Where does your universal consciousness emerge from?
Ran:It's on the inside. It's not on the outside. It's like ... a metaphor I like to think of is, there's the universal consciousness just like looking through different keyholes or pinholes. And it looks through one keyhole and it sees what you see. It looks through another, it sees what I see. Not just what we see, but what we experience, our whole sense of self. So your whole sense of self or my whole sense of self is something larger that's making itself smaller and constraining its view in different ways. So where does it emerge from? It always existed. It's outside time and incomprehensible to us. But within us, it's ... go ahead.
Leafbox:No, I was going to ask just related to consciousness is, do you have any thoughts on augmented reality and relationship with consciousness?
Ran:Augmented reality ...
Leafbox:VR ... if this is ... a lot of people-
Ran:Yeah. I see what you're saying. I mean, that's a new path. I mean, augmented reality is a new thing that consciousness is doing. At the same time I wonder if we're just ... there's two directions you can go with it. You can go outward or inward. You can use it to go deeper and deeper inside of things, or ... man, having trouble putting this into words. But imagine you've got augmented reality, just trying to teach people how to do martial arts, and they go, they put on this full body suit, and they have this simulated person they're fighting. You can only go so far simulating it. Or let's say somebody's trying to figure out how to do augmented reality about how to fix a car, how to repair an engine. And you can only go so far with a simulation before you have to go back to reality. If you're trying to learn martial arts, you have to go back to the real physical world.
And it's funny because on one hand I think the physical world is not exactly real, but the physical world is where we work it all out, and you've got to get back to ... augmented reality has to remain anchored in the physical world, and if it veers off too much from it it will kind of make people insane and be less effective.
Leafbox:Ran, do you think that reality is a simulation?
Ran:I mean, I think that's a nice metaphor. I think this whole physical world, it's not that ... now one way to think about it is this whole physical world is not really real because it's all being simulated. But the way I see it is, this is the simulation. I'm a flesh avatar, of something that I can't understand, and this whole physical world is the ... it's not that it's real because it's being simulated. It's that it is a simulation that we are all in and this is what we have to work with.
It's like, this is how ... imagine you're just one mind. Let's imagine solipsism. You're just one mind floating in space and you create this entire world. Solipsism is a cool idea because you can't be falsified. It's like, you can't prove that's not true, that you alone are floating in nothingness and imagining everything. But then where it breaks down is, okay, if I'm imagining everything then where does all this stuff come from? Where does all the not me come from? Where does all this stuff come from that ... where does surprise come from? Where does all the stuff come from that is not consciously part of me?
You could say, well, it's still me, but it's my subconscious. But in that case, it's much bigger. I mean, it doesn't really make sense to say it's only me given that the part that's not me that I'm not conscious of is so much is so much bigger.
So trying to tie that back to the physical world, it's like, you're floating in space and you find someone else floating in space and you join together with them to make a world together. And then sometimes there's two of you, then there's three, then there's four. And if it's just you, you can do anything, you know, you can create anything. It's just your conscious mind floating in nothingness. You can create anything. You can create anything you want. The same was ... it's like a single player video game with good mods and good cheat codes. You can do anything. But then as soon as it gets multiplayer, you have to work it out with other people.
So when I see the physical world as just ... the physical world is what you get when you have multiple perspectives that are trying to reach agreement. And I don't know, I think in one sense, reality is a popularity contest. But then if reality's a popularity contest, who gets to vote? And I think it goes far beyond humans. There's all kinds of perspectives or beings or aspects of consciousness that are collaborating to decide what this world looks like. And maybe humans aren't all that important in the whole scheme of it.
Leafbox:Well Ran, that connects me to, have you ever done DMT?
Ran:I never have. I would like to, but I know there's ways to synthesize it from Morning Glory seeds, I'm just too lazy to do that. So I'm just kind of waiting until someone gives me some, but I would like to do DMT. Yeah, never have.
Leafbox:Have you read any of the research in DMT, like the beings, or the prolonged DMT experiences?
Ran:I have seen that people are trying to get it to make DMT that last for a longer trip. That's a cool idea. I mean, maybe something bad will happen, but I think they should try it. I think it would be fun. I mean, yeah ... I look at the psychonaut subreddit. That's basically where I look, where ... that's the only psychedelic community that I look at regularly, is the psychedelic subreddit. And they're always talking about machine elves and the various DMT entities that you run into. I've never ... and haven't ever used a big dose of any psychedelic. I always just using just regular kind of small doses, but I've never actually hallucinated. I've never seen anything that's not there. My mind has never gone off into some other world. So it would be cool to do that sometime.
Leafbox:Yeah, there's a neuroscientist out of Okinawa, Andrew Gallimore. I think he's in charge of that DMT, kind of psychoneurotic extension program. Very fascinating.
Ran:Okay, cool.
Leafbox:They're just trying to enter into that other world for longer to see what happens or what they can learn or take back or ... a lot of interesting. Have you ever ... I don't know if you've ever done, heard of the game of life computer science program? it's like-
Ran:Yeah. I think I read about that a long time ago. Can you remind me about what that is?
Leafbox:Well, every first-year computer science student basically learns the game of life, and you set up these rules and it almost looks like a checker board. You put these little bacteria on there and you set rules. If the bacteria's next to another bacteria, they mate, if next to three, they fight. And then what happens, these self-emergent civilizations emerge just from these basic rules. And a lot of people extend that then to reality, that the rules are just beyond our grasp, but those rules are defining the consciousness or the reality or ... so it's similar to what you're talking about of, it's just the fascinating neuroscience and math and information. And so the DMT people want to enter that world because they think that's a way to see the information behind this layer of reality.
Ran:Okay. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I mean, that's a cool idea. I have to wonder about the limits of the human brain to ... it's like maybe the drugs put your brain temporarily into a state where you can see this stuff, and then ... but you can't stay in that state and you have to come back to this state and then you're like, It made total sense when I was in there, and now that I'm back here, it doesn't make sense. So I wonder how that could line up with ... how that could synergize with actual trying to actually change the human brain to have a different structure. And that's getting into some real weird stuff.
I think one of the technologies that is going to come along that is going be interesting and dangerous, but also maybe, fun is brain hacking. I think there's going to be a lot of, assuming we don't get a total tech crash—when I'm talking about doom, I always have to keep the possibility open that we are going to get a total technology crash. But if we don't, if there's still people somewhere that are doing new stuff with technology, I think brain hacking is going to be big.
Whatever we can do by ... it's going to get to a level where ... or LSD will seem primitive. You take this molecule and put it inside your brain and you could actually have implants in your brain that are doing whatever. I think there's going to be a lot of action on that front in the coming decades.
Leafbox:So would you consider yourself a techno utopian, then? Kind of-
Ran:Oh, I don't I that ... man, no. I do ... I don't want to put that tag on myself. I think technology is going to do some cool stuff. There's this quote from I think Arthur C. Clarke that says, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." And I like a variant on that, which is, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature. And that's the insight I get when I'm on psychedelics is like, Wow, everything ... you know, you go out, you walk down to a river in early summer, and this is it. This is ... these creatures, these plants and animals and water and whatever, they've got a system that's robust, that's enjoyable. And humans are tinkering around trying to do our own thing just like that. And we're trying to duplicate in our creations the heavenly nature of the non-human made world.
So I do think I'm utopian in the sense that I think we can do a lot better. And I think inevitably we're going to do a lot better, humans. I think humans, it's our nature that we try to ... we're always doing crazy new things and we make a lot of mistakes and then eventually we start to get it right. I think we're still, in a lot of ways still in the mistake-making phase and we're going to get it right. And I think in a thousand years, they'll look back at us as pretty brutish and primitive. And if we were to look a thousand years ahead of them, we'd say, Oh, they're doing some cool stuff, but maybe they'd also be doing some stuff that we don't like. So in that sense, I'm a utopian.
Leafbox:Do you have any thoughts on biogenetics and some of ... what are your fears on technology, in terms of ... some of mine personally are just losing the aspect of humanity.
Ran:Yeah. I think that's the way that humans could actually go extinct. If there's one way ... if you ask me what way is most likely for humans to go extinct, is through biotech where we ... we're like, We're going to make this change to our own genomes that looks like an improvement. And because we're shortsighted, it's not an improvement and it makes things worse. And we can't go back to the way it was before. And we go extinct. That's a real possibility, that humans are going to drive ourselves into extinction through irreversible biotech.
But then when I talk to people who actually know more than I do about genetic technology, it's really hard. It's not like the DNA is like a blueprint where you go in and you're like, Oh, we're going to give people wings. It's really hard to go in there and just get whatever changes you want. You have to muck around and try different things, and then something comes out that is not what you expected.
So yeah, but we're going to do it. Humans are going to do crazy stuff with genetic technology. And then it's going to be interesting to see where it goes.
Leafbox:Talking about genetics and biotechnology and even bio warfare, do you have any thoughts on the last two years of COVID, or how has that been for you?
Ran:Oh, I mean, I enjoyed quarantine because I like to stay home anyway. And I think one good thing that came out of it was the whole working from home thing. I mean, I'm here in Seattle, the King County administration building is now empty. They've gone 100% working from home. And there's a lot of places that ... and it's better overall. And I think it's going to ... there's a lot of managers, a lot of managerial jobs that are not really necessary, and the managers want to keep people in the office because they have power over people, but people working from home and then things might work out better with fewer managers. I think that's a big benefit that's come out of COVID, is more working from home.
Of course, with the class aspect, the service workers can't work from home. And it's funny, the people who still had to work during COVID are the people who make the least money, but a lot of people did get ... are living better now because of COVID making it easier to work from home.
Leafbox:I read some of your thoughts on 9/11 on your website.
How do you feel about kind of ... I call it kind of the mind virus, or some of the ... that went on for the last two years, or three years with the pandemic. I think the West lost a lot of ability to ... free speech. The psychological operations were clear. I'm just curious what you think about just some of the responses to the virus, or the vaccine, or anything like that. The masking, the rules.
Ran:I mean, yeah, some of the rules are silly. Like, they actually said that it's not good to wear a mask, and the reason they said that was they wanted to save the masks for the medical places where they were really ... I mean, it's going to be clunky, there's going to be mistakes. But I think overall ... I mean, when COVID first appeared, my first thought was, why are we taking so many precautions against something that only has a 1% death rate? But then it makes sense when you look at hospitals because if hospitals get overwhelmed, a lot of people would die who would not otherwise die. So the way I started framing COVID was, as long as hospitals are not getting overwhelmed, we should call it a win and we should just do whatever precautions are necessary to keep the hospitals from getting overwhelmed, and beyond that, we should just let people get sick if they want.
I think ... I understand why people are afraid of vaccinations because here's the central authority saying you've got to put this thing in your body. But when I look at the science, it looks pretty good. I got the vax, I got the Moderna vax, and I think it helped me when I got COVID to get less sick than I would've got. I think it's a pretty interesting technology, the mRNA thing that they developed, and it might ... we might still not have it if they hadn't had to develop it really fast to try to fix COVID.
Leafbox:I was just curious, do you partake in any of the conspiracy theories or are you outside of that?
Ran:I think, I mean as far as I can figure out, it did come from a Chinese biolab. It was accidentally released. That's what I think about it, is that, it was a Chinese biolab that was tinkering with bio weapons or something, and they were sloppy with, and it accidentally got released. That's where I think it came from. And beyond that, I don't really prescribe to any of the COVID conspiracy theories.
Leafbox:What do you think about conspiracies in general? What do you think?
Ran:I mean, conspiracy's one of those words that points to a lot of things. But I think it's good for people to not take it face value, what we're told, and to try to figure things out on our own. At the same time, I mean with the internet, it's really easy to just create these groups that veer off into beliefs with, I mean, you get into echo chambers really easily. And it's easy, I mean, it's human nature to want to tell beautiful stories. I think that's where a lot of this comes from. You want to tell a story about the world that makes the world seem more exciting and more fun to live in. And the internet allows us to self filter where we get our stories from. And people can go off and find their own stories that paint a world that seems more exciting for them to live in or more meaningful. And they can find other people who back up from that.
I stopped writing about politics because I just got tired of arguing. But I'll say this about Trump, is that he's a political cold reader. He's a cold reader is someone who like, someone like a fake psychic who will say, "Oh yes, I've been thinking of a person named Jeff," and was like, "Oh yes, yes. You know my brother's named Jeff." Trump does that on a massive scale where he'll just say stuff and whatever people respond to, he says more of that stuff and that's why he became president. Because he's so talented at doing that. But that's also what the internet in general does, is if you start thinking of a certain way and you plug it in, it can reinforce that. And you can get, I mean, this AI is going to do some crazy stuff like bots that, I mean, I haven't read it a lot. And they're more and more bots on, right?
And my view of AI, which I mentioned on a blog a couple weeks ago is that, I think the way to look at it is something created by humans and AI is part of the human story, and it's going to give humans, this is going to be interesting to see what the intersection on the internet of bots feeding back what people want to believe or feeding back stories that people enjoy telling each other and how that could grow in AI space.
Leafbox:Ran, how do you avoid, or do you drop into the echo chamber?
Ran:Well, so how do I avoid dropping into an echo chamber is just to ...
Leafbox:Or, conversely, do you go further into it?
Ran:To go further into it is, I mean, I guess, I've done that a little bit in the past where you're like, you're into something and you, to go into it is, I guess it's, you can almost put in terms of, you can always define in terms of the body. Do you feel like your body's expanding or do you feel like it's contracting? Or you could just say the mind is expanding or contracting and to go, it feels good to contract, it feels good to zoom in. It feels good to look at smaller and smaller things and see more importance and value in smaller and smaller things. And I try to resist that by ...
And the nice thing about having a blog is people will tell me when I'm wrong. And readers have done that a lot over the years and it's helping me change my opinions a lot, is to have to people emailing me saying, "Hey, here's some evidence that goes against what you're saying."
So the way to avoid, the way to get out of an echo chamber is just painful expansion into stuff that you don't like hearing. And you have to be willing to endure some pain to see things that don't fit your narrative. And I'm not great at that, but I do try to practice that. And there are some people who say they intentionally go to all the whole spectrum of political sites to keep their perspective wide. I'm just not interested enough to do that. But I do try to remain open to the idea that I'm wrong and practice.
I think it's good to, for metaphysics, I've written about this in terms of, for example, solipsism. I don't actually believe in solipsism, but if I can go temporarily into that space is helpful and I can pull out of it. Or determinism, I can go temporarily, if I start to think I'm better than other people, then I go into determinism mind space and under determinism, any way that I'm better than anyone else is 100% luck. And I can't go around thinking, Oh, I'm all smart and these people are stupid, because I'm just lucky and they're unlucky. And you go into determinism and then it does its job when you go out of it. So I think that's a good mental skill is to practice going into and out of ways of thinking. And if a way of thinking is fun and compelling, then it's easier to get into it and harder to get out of it, but you have to practice that.
Leafbox:Ran, what's some of the examples of where you've changed your mind?
Ran:I guess I'd go, I guess it'd look more like, I used to think that the whole system was going to collapse. If you look back at stuff I was writing in 2003, about 20 years ago, I thought that the whole global society was a lot more delicate than it turns out to be. People use the house of cards metaphor, the whole thing is going to come down like a house of cards. Well, the moment that I changed my mind on that was Hurricane Katrina. And if you'd asked people a year before Hurricane Katrina, what would happen if America's largest port city would be shut down for months, they would say, "Oh, it would cause a cascading series of effects and we'd all be living in the ruins." But actually, no, it just, where I was, the only effect of Katrina was gas prices got a little higher. So, I changed my mind on how fragile or how robust the human society is. It really can take a lot of pretty hard hits.
At the same time, every complex society eventually falls. And I think there's going to be some event, I know I'm going off on a tangent here. There's going to be some event in the future where everyone looks back on the effect of the equivalent of the Visigoths sacking Rome. People don't know much about Rome. Ancient Rome would be, "Oh, Rome was just buzzing along fine. And then one day the Visigoths sacked it, and then it was over." When really it was weakening for hundreds of years before that event happened and continued weakening for hundreds years after. So I think we get we're going to have a Visigoths sack Rome event. It hasn't happened yet. The history will look back, dumb history will look back and say, "Oh, that's where it all collapsed," and to us it'd be like, "Oh, that's just another bad thing that happened."
So, I'm going back to the subject where I've changed my mind on, like the critique of civilization. I haven't exactly, I still think that the best primitive tribes live better than us. And if you could pick any human society that ever happened in the history of the world, if they got the best ones, they would all be nature based cultures. But at the same time, a lot of nature based cultures are terrible. So the tribal people were in the whole range from living a lot better than us to living a lot worse in terms of subjective quality of life. So I used to write a lot about civilization, and now I stopped using that word because it has too much baggage. The word civilization points to things that I'm against, like central control and empire. And it also points to stuff I'm in favor of, which is people getting nicer to each other. And those don't necessarily go together.
Leafbox:Have you heard of Dmitry Orlov?
Ran:I actually, I read his stuff, I haven't read his stuff recently, but back in the aughties, I actually emailed back and forth with him a couple times and I read his stuff. He's an interesting thinker.
Leafbox:I just wondered if he, I mean, he definitely thinks, well, he leans more to the west in his analysis. But I mean, he does have the example of Russia collapsing, and I lean to the long emergency framework, like you.
Ran:Okay, okay.
Leafbox:Collapse takes centuries. It's not like an instant thing. And some things get better, some things get worse. So it's hard to know really.
Ran:Yeah. Yeah.
Leafbox:I am concerned ...
Ran:Go ahead.
Leafbox:Just personally, I just wonder, in your writing, do you have any topics you want to write about but can't or self censorship or anything like that?
Ran:Not really. The left right now has certain things that it doesn't want people to say, but I'm not really interested in saying those things. So, I mean, the main self censorship, I don't write about, I stopped writing about politics because I'm tired of arguing. But, it's funny that some of the most hostility I get is when I'm too optimistic, when I say, like I said, something nice about Steven Pinker and his idea and his idea that humans are getting progressively nicer. People got pissed off about that and it's true, when you look at Steven Pinker, his reasons for why he thinks the people are getting nicer don't really add up. But I think that data is accurate, and I believe in something like moral progress or ethical progress.
And that's oddly one of the things that I've got the most pushback from writing about, that the people are getting nicer. I think we are, and over time, you look back thousands of years ago is all kinds of terrible stuff that's not going on now. And I think in thousands of years there'll be terrible stuff is going on now that will not be going on. At the same time, there's going to be new crazy stuff. But to go back to your question, I don't really, other than not writing about the hot button subjects anymore, I don't really do any self censorship.
Leafbox:Ran, maybe just to wind it down, how do you design or build your moral framework then?
Ran:That's an interesting question. How do I design and build my moral framework? I mean, I think, this is an idea, a phrase I got years ago from some new age book, and that is the greatest good of all life everywhere.
And my moral framework is the greatest good of all life everywhere, which is beyond my comprehension. But I can work towards that and, I mean, morality is all about being unselfish. It's all about getting out of the small view of what's good for me and the larger view of what's good for other people. And I guess that would be that's my moral framework.
It's just thinking about trying to understand better the interests of more people. And at the same time, I know what makes me happy. I don't know what directly experience what makes me happy, and I don't directly experience what makes other people happy, nor do they experience what makes me happy. So for the same time, I have to serve myself. I have to do what makes me feel good. And that's balanced against trying to figure out what other people need and not stepping on other people's toes. So that, I guess, that's my moral framework.
Leafbox:To maximize the good in the world, I guess, or even in all layers.
Ran:Yes. And it's hard to find, if you say, "Okay, the greatest good." Well, what ... It gets into hard stuff to define, but it's a challenge, it's a constant challenge to try to work out what to do. I wonder if in hundreds of years they'll look back. I wonder if I'll get canceled in hundreds of years because I eat factory farm meat. But that's something I do, and I look forward to some future world where we'll be able to eat without that. But right now, that's too much of a sacrifice for me to make, is to give up eating meat.
Leafbox:Well that's a whole world of topics. I heard the most interesting argument against vegetarianism is the moral value of all the animals alive. So, there's just so many animals, billions of animals that are obviously factory farming versus an organic, wonderful farm and a rural place. So it's just an interesting thing. You'd have to terminate all those lives in all ...
Ran:That's an interesting idea. I say that's better to not exist at all than to exist as a factory farm animal. But another argument I've seen is the vegetables, to clear farmland to grow vegetables? A lot of animals have to be killed. You have to cut down a forest to build those fields. And a lot of creatures that we're living in whatever the field is now in, have their way of life destroyed. So there's no morally pure way to eat. Although there could be, in the future. This is my utopian vision is that is genetically modified trees so that everywhere you go you can just live by eating the fruit off trees, which is totally unrealistic now, but who knows? In a thousand years maybe we'll just be able to live off eating the fruit off trees.
Leafbox:We'll see. Very complex.
Ran:Yeah.
Leafbox:Ran, is there anything else you want to discuss today? I mean, there's a hundred topics I could ask you, but I don't want to take more of your time.
Ran:My voice is getting a little tired, so I think I probably better hang it up. But, it's been nice.
Leafbox:Thanks so much,
Learn more of Ran's thoughts @ RanPrieur.com
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Leafbox:Ken - Thanks so much for meeting me.
Ken-san:Thank you for coming.
Leafbox:So, you were saying, this business is just you and your wife, right?
Ken-san:Yeah, this place is mainly run by myself, so it's more like a one man operation. Yeah, my wife helps, but I try not to ask her too much help. I'll be in trouble later.
Leafbox:Do you live in Haleiwa too or no?
Ken-san:Yeah, we live here.
Leafbox:As well. There's a little house next door.
Ken-san:Next door.
Leafbox:That's so nice.
Ken-san:Behind this wall is where we live.Leafbox:That's beautiful. That's great.
Ken-san:Because once things get going, I have to monitor everything 24-7, so I have to be here.
Leafbox:Can I ask maybe what's your background or where you're from in Japan?
Ken-san:I'm from Osaka, Japan, I mean originally from Osaka, Japan.
Leafbox:And did you work in spirits there as well?
Ken-san:Because I wanted to make shochu in Hawaii, I became an apprentice.
Leafbox:In Japan?
Ken-san:Under my master, in Kagoshima, Japan. (Ken apprenticed with Manzen)
Ken-san:Those two bottles over there, the black and blue, those are my senseis.
Leafbox:And how long did you apprentice for?
Ken-san:Only three years.
Leafbox:What type of Shochu were they making there?
Ken-san:Sweet potato Shochu.
Leafbox:100% sweet potato?
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:Great.
Ken-san:No, not 100% because Shochu has to be made with kōji.
Leafbox:Yeah, well, that's the rice, the yeast, but no sugar added or barley? Because some shochu has barley.
Ken-san:No sugar added, it's authentic shochu.
Leafbox:Yeah.
Ken-san:In Japan you can find a variety of Shochu. Ours is made from sweet potatoes. I think it's the most consumed Shochu in Japan. But Shochu you can be made from, as you said, barley, Mugi Shochu, rice, Kome Shochu, buckwheat, sugar cane, chestnuts, many varieties of Shochu you can find in Japan.
Leafbox:And then you chose sweet potato because of the Hawaii varietal high sugar level?
Ken-san:Hawaii produces a good quality of sweet potatoes.
Leafbox:And are all your sweet potatoes from Moloka‘i or from where?
Ken-san:Depending on the batch. So, for example, the current batch, number 19. So, this one is batch number 19. 19 means our 19th batch since we started this business, we do two batches per year. In the springtime and the fall season. For this batch, we used the sweet potatoes from Hamakua, on the big island. The previous batch, number 18, we used the sweet potatoes from Mokulēia, North shore. So, every batch is slightly different, depending on the sweet potato, the variety of the sweet potatoes we use, or the production side of the sweet potato changes.
Leafbox:And then how do you source the sweet potato? I'm just curious.
Ken-san:Sweet potatoes growers have been support very supportive to me, to us.
Leafbox:Great. So, they send you a sample and then you kind of…
Ken-san:Yeah, something like that. And they have other connections there. So, one guy introduced me to the other guy and they tried to help us. But so much super potatoes are produced in Hawaii.
Leafbox:No, I know, so I was just curious how you select, if you're selecting for sugar level or flavor.
Ken-san:Just a sample, and eat it.
Leafbox:Got it. Cook it, steam it?
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:Nice. And then going back to Japan, what were you doing before you were an apprentice?
Ken-san:Nothing much. I was drinking more than making.
Leafbox:Were you a salary man?
Ken-san:I was a, what do you call? I was working as a freelance product development type of thing.
Leafbox:In which sector, alcohol too?
Ken-san:No, it's more like traditional handcraft.
Leafbox:That's cool.
Ken-san:Yeah. But I started my career as finance, after I graduate from college.
Leafbox:Got it. And then that was in Osaka as well?
Ken-san:I first found a job in Hong Kong. Because I graduated from college on the mainland and then found a job in Hong Kong and moved around and ended up making Shochu in Hawaii.
Leafbox:So, you worked in finance for a few years, in trading side or investment side?
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:Okay. For a Japanese securities company?
Ken-san:It's more like international interest rate market.
Leafbox:Got it. And then when did you become tired with the finance world?
Ken-san:Well, as soon as I finished working in Hong Kong, I moved back to Japan, and started something else.
Leafbox:Got it. Well, that's useful to have that finance background for the business side.
Ken-san:I'm not that smart. So, I figured finance is not my thing. I don't have that kind of brain. Yeah.
Leafbox:Well, I'm sure you're too humble.
Leafbox:I'm just curious what your experience in Hong Kong was like and how did that maybe inspire anything, travel?
Ken-san:Yeah, because I went to college on the mainland, I got to meet kids from Hawaii.
Leafbox:You mean the United States? Not the mainland Japan.
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:Got it.
Ken-san:In the US. Portland, Oregon. And many kids from Hawaii were attending the same school, so I got to meet those kids, and summer break I was able to come to Hawaii and have fun with those guys and so Hawaii became one of my favorite destinations to enjoy in summer breaks.
Leafbox:And why did you study in the United States versus studying in Japan? I'm just curious.
Ken-san:Just a strange thing. It just happened, yeah. Because at my place, my home, we had an exchange student from United States. So, his family invited me to their place.
Leafbox:In Portland?
Ken-san:In Washington.
Leafbox:Got it.Ken-san:And then I ended up going to school there, I mean on the mainland.
Leafbox:Interesting.
Ken-san:Through the family.
Leafbox:So, the story is getting more and more deeper.
Ken-san:That had nothing to do with the shochu making.
Leafbox:100%, of course it does, because if you hadn't met that exchange student, maybe you wouldn't be in Hawaii, right?
Ken-san:No, that's true.
Leafbox:Yeah. So, I think it's interesting to learn how... When we made beer, every single choice makes some flavor choice or selection, I think it's interesting, you know what I mean?
Ken-san:That's exactly right, yeah.
Leafbox:So, I was just curious what brought you to Hawaii? So, some high school college experience slowly created the dream of Hawaii, maybe in your mind?
Ken-san:Yeah, when I was visiting Hawaii, I was eating poi with friends and then I thought maybe you can make Shochu from taro. At that time I was just joking because I didn't know anything about making Shochu from whatever. But the idea came back to me later, then I thought it would be nice to make Shochu in Hawaii. So, I became my master's apprentice.
Leafbox:So, going back, you quit the finance, you come back to Japan, doing some freelance work. How did you select where you could apprentice? Did you just look for a specific maker?
Ken-san:Because I really loved his Shochu.
Leafbox:Got it.
Ken-san:Yeah. He applied a traditional handcraft Shochu making techniques. That's kind of rare because everything has been more modernized in Japan for the mass production. But he applied a traditional way with traditional equipment. I really wanted to learn from him.
Leafbox:And then what was your experience apprenticing like? He approved your apprenticeship to join. What was the first thing you got there? Washing pots or what was your experience? You were a brew master?
Ken-san:No, it's not like school, so he didn't teach me how to make Shochu. He just said, okay, it took a while to get accepted because usually those type of small distilleries don't welcome the outsiders. Usually all the techniques are passed onto the next generations within family members. But it was really fortunate that he took me as an apprentice, and he said just work with me for three years, because I was already about 40 years old, usually it takes long, but he said three years, just work with me. That's it.
Leafbox:And then you'll learn everything.
Ken-san:Yeah. I just have to learn.
Leafbox:Yeah. When I had the brewery, we had so many apprentice people come to just learn to make beer, whiskey, or whatever, the same, but maybe we're less difficult to say no. I think in Japan they're more harder to get in.
Ken-san:No, it's really hard. How serious you are to learn.
Leafbox:So, you have to keep saying, I really...
Ken-san:I have to keep going back to him and ask or beg to accept me as an apprentice.
Leafbox:Were you paid as an apprentice?
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:Really?
Ken-san:He was really generous.
Leafbox:Okay. That's unusual.
Ken-san:Yeah. He is a really unique guy.
Leafbox:And did you live in that town as well?
Ken-san:Mm-hmm.
Leafbox:Nice. The stereotypical image of the apprenticeship in Japan is that it's very rigorous, but maybe was this guy rigorous? Waking up, 4:00 AM.
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:Kind of like a dojo.
Ken-san:Usually, just like here, work starts at 5:00 and ends at 5:00. But sometimes, often, we have to get up in the middle of the night and take care of kōji. So, same, start at 5:00 and ends at 5:00.
Leafbox:And how many people, workers, did you have at this brewery?
Ken-san:Including him, three.
Leafbox:It's very tiny.
Ken-san:Four, five.
Leafbox:Lots to do.
Ken-san:Four.
Leafbox:And what kind of production did they have a year? Do you know?
Ken-san:The volume?
Leafbox:Yeah, I'm just curious.
Ken-san:His place is considered as one of the smallest, but he makes maybe 50 times more than us. But that's one of the smallest in Japan.
Leafbox:And it's all traditional?
Ken-san:Mm-hmm, because he works six, eight months straight, every day.
Leafbox:Great. So, well, let's go now to Shochu. You get to the apprentice level, did you know any of the techniques prior? You researched, read? Any familiarity with sake making?Ken-san:Not really. Just by reading it.
Leafbox:Got it. No home brewing experience or anything?
Ken-san:No.
Leafbox:Got it. So, what were your first impressions? Just making the mash, the momodi or the...
Ken-san:Moromi (the first fermentation)
Leafbox:Yeah. What was your first impression? I'm just curious.
Ken-san:I don't remember.
Leafbox:Got it. I'm just curious.
Ken-san:Every day was new to me. So, every day, because my goal was to establish my own distillery in Hawaii, so every single day I was trying to learn everything. Whatever I was able to learn, I wanted to learn. So, I write down everything, all the notes. So, I remember that every single thing I was doing was new to me.
Leafbox:Great. So, maybe, Ken, you can walk us through what's the basic process for making Shochu?
Ken-san:Shochu, same as sake, the first step of Shochu making or sake making is kōji making. Kōji can be made with rice, barley, sweet potatoes, buckwheat, whatever you want. Just because we make sweet potato Shochu, that doesn't mean we have to use sweet potatoes to let the kōji mold grow on. So, the mother can be anything, it can be rice, whatever. So, in our case we make sweet potato Shochu you but our kōji is kōji rice. So, we let the kōji mold grow onto rice. So, that's the first step, we convert the rice into kōji rice. That's the first step.
Leafbox:And are you using a starter or where do you get the initial strain of kōji?
Ken-san:We buy a starter from the kōji makers from Japan. There are kōji makers, because miso makers, Shoyu makers, sake makers, Shochu makers, they all need kōji. So, there are kōji makers in JapanLeafbox:Yeah. They grow the yeast, yeah.
Ken-san:And they supply the starters to those people who need kōji. So, we buy the starter from the kōji makers.
Leafbox:Why are you using rice for the base instead of-
Ken-san:It's just a personal thing. You can use whatever you like.
Leafbox:And what kind of rice are you using?
Ken-san:We use rice from California. Yeah, Koda Farms. I have a picture.
Leafbox:Yeah, I know Koda Farms in Northern California. Yeah.
Ken-san:Yeah. We import the Koda Farms heirloom rice, the highest quality rice they produce.
Leafbox:Did you experiment with different rices?
Ken-san:Yeah, we tried to source ingredients as local as possible, but no rice in Hawaii. The closest we were able to find was California rice, and we picked some, and I got Koda Farms.
Leafbox:Have you ever looked, is anyone making wild yeast kōji? Because some beer people or natural wines, they use natural yeast.
Ken-san:Kōji cannot...
Leafbox:There's no way to reproduce?
Ken-san:No.
Leafbox:Just wild growth?
Ken-san:No, because it's just a mold and it's easily get contaminated. You cannot use wild kōji. It might be a bad mold.
Leafbox:Yeah, and then the flavors will go bad. Yeah.
Ken-san:So, you usually we use the kōji from kōji makers.
Leafbox:So, in traditional Japan do they have the kōji makers as well?
Ken-san:They have over a thousand years of history.
Leafbox:Really?
Ken-san:Yeah. So, they have been supplying the starters to all the people who need kōji.Leafbox:And their own technique is just kōji making.
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:That's interesting. My family business is, do you know what rennet is? Rennet.
Ken-san:I'm sorry, I don't know.
Leafbox:Rennet is to make cheese.
Ken-san:Cheese.
Leafbox:It's the fungus to make different types of cheese. So, there's many types of rennet that you can make from the stomach of the cow, you can cultivate that and grow the yeast.
Ken-san:Interesting.
Leafbox:But my family has a factory that we make yeast, but for cheese making.
Ken-san:Yeah, similar.
Leafbox:Similar. But we actually have to buy a starter from Japan.
Ken-san:Us?
Leafbox:No, my family business. Yeah, we've been buying for over 70 years from the Meiji Company, the confectionary company.
Ken-san:Yeah, Meiji, yeah.
Leafbox:They have an industrial biochemical food... Yeah, so my grandpa started that business and he's been buying the same... So, I understand, people are very specialized in making... Meiji's a big company obviously, but, yeah.
Ken-san:Because, as you know, kōji mold, you can find it in nature. Isolating the pure kōji strain is a hard thing to do.
Leafbox:Yeah. You have to know how to maintain the starter, it's like growing a mushroom.
Ken-san:Yeah. So, we just buy from the kōji makers.
Leafbox:Yeah. The same when I had the brewery, we would use different strains of yeast, some from Germany, some from the US, some from Amsterdam.
Ken-san:It's similar.
Leafbox:Yeah, the same. But you could take the purge and then regrow it sometimes.
Ken-san:That's something we cannot do with kōji.
Leafbox:With Shochu. Yeah.
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:Interesting.
Ken-san:We use both kōji and yeast.
Leafbox:What kind of yeast are you using?
Ken-san:We use different types of east depending on the batch. But sometimes we use the yeast from Hawaii, which is isolated from some plants, cacao and stuff. Sometimes we use yeast from Japan. It depends.
Leafbox:And these are dry or wet?
Ken-san:Wet.
Leafbox:And then obviously temperature management becomes...
Ken-san:I don't do it. I ask a lab to produce a yeast culture.
Leafbox:Got it. Yeah. Because, like you said, it can become volatile and other things grow.
Ken-san:You can use wild yeast, but Hawaii, the temperature is warm, so contamination is the worst thing. So, I try not to use the wild yeast without using the yeast culture.
Leafbox:Yeah. It's very interesting. You know ava, right? Kava? They sometimes ferment, but I think they're using wild yeast, they just let it outside. So, or a pineapple has some yeast on the side. You can use that.
Ken-san:That's right.
Leafbox:Like a tepache, making a Mexican low alcohol, but you're not going to get the alcohol you need.
Ken-san:That's true. Yeah.
Leafbox:The levels you need.
Ken-san:It's too warm now.
Leafbox:Yeah, probably. But so, kōji making, fermenting the rice, what's the process with getting the kōji growing for you? Or how long does it take?
Ken-san:48 hours. After I've seen the rice, I take the rice into this small room called the kōji room, you want to see?
Leafbox:Maybe after we can look, yeah.
Ken-san:Okay. And I come in here and do all kinds of stuff every three, four hours, for 48 hours. After 48 hours, the rice becomes culture rice, which we call kōji rice. That's the stage, kōji is a mold, it grows onto or into rice nicely and evenly. So, kōji rice is a molded race, that takes 48 hours.
Leafbox:And then the next step after that?
Ken-san:We ferment the kōji rice first. Then we do two stages of stages of fermentation. First we ferment the kōji rice with yeast and water, then add the main ingredients and ferment again. So, we do two stages of fermentation.
Leafbox:And what's the time, how long does the first run take?
Ken-san:One one week for the first stage, and second stage, about eight to 10 days.
Leafbox:So, it's relatively fast. And this is without temperature control?
Ken-san:Hawaii is relatively mild, so for Shochu we ferment around 30 to 32 degrees Celsius, so usually we don't need to control much. But I do, I monitor the temperature really carefully, but we don't have to have a machine or anything.
Leafbox:You don't have any jacketing?
Ken-san:No, nothing. We only have those, do you see those coils?
Leafbox:Correct, yeah.
Ken-san:We just keep the coil inside.
Leafbox:To cool the temperature, yeah.
Ken-san:When it gets too warm.
Leafbox:And then that's usually, maybe on the fourth or fifth day, the temperature is going to go up, depending on the weather.
Ken-san:First few days, yeah. But I try not to do much. I try not to do as much as possible.
Leafbox:What's your mash process? How do you prepare the sweet potato?
Ken-san:I just steam.
Leafbox:So, with skin or no skin?
Ken-san:With skin on. I try to leave the skin or as much as possible too.
Leafbox:Interesting. And then you put all that in, and?
Ken-san:And mix with the kōji rice.
Leafbox:And that's enough sugar content?
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:And then what's your alcohol level you're getting to in the first…
Ken-san:About 15% after the second mash is fully fermented.
Leafbox:And you filter out and then...
Ken-san:More filter.
Leafbox:How do you distill then?
Ken-san:We just put the whole thing into the still and distill.
Leafbox:Got it. And how fast is your distillation?
Ken-san:Three hours.
Leafbox:Okay. And then you have impurities taken out. Do you have to take out the front or the tails at all or no?
Ken-san:No, we just take the tail off.
Leafbox:Because the flavors become too strong?
Ken-san:Yeah, I don't like to, it's up to the distiller. So, we collect our shochu at 40%, 80 proof. That's it.
Leafbox:And then do you do cask aging or anything?
Ken-san:Usually Shochu don't age in a cask, that's a good thing about shochu. You don't have to age in a cask. You can still enjoy without aging. So, I repeat the process over and over to fill up the green tank, do you see?
Leafbox:Yeah.
Ken-san:And let it mature another four, five months, then bottle. So, it takes six months to do one batch, and one tankful produces about 3,000 bottles.
Leafbox:So, say that again one more time, so why does it take so long to put into the green tun?
Ken-san:After we ferment our mash in those vats, and we distill with the wooden pot still. And I have to repeat this process over and over to fill up the green tank.
Leafbox:Got it. Perfect.
Ken-san:Yeah, that takes about two months, and we use about 12,000 to 15,000 pounds of sweet potatoes.
Leafbox:So, the main concern here is the lack of the primary mash ton size. If you had twice the size, you could fill it faster obviously. Yeah.
Ken-san:Yeah. But we have enough or you repeat more as much as you want.
Leafbox:Well, you still have to sit it there for two weeks, right?
Ken-san:One week, and another eight to 10 days for second mash.
Leafbox:Yeah, much faster. Plus, you don't have to age, which is nice for the...
Ken-san:Yeah, one good thing about Shochu is people enjoy the aroma, so if you age too long, it becomes smoother like other spirits, but it loses the aroma.
Leafbox:Is anyone aging shochu in Japan?
Ken-san:Yeah, many people do. So, we do sometimes, we have barrels. We sometimes age our Shochu in the barrels and make it do that, but if you age in the wood, it becomes more like a whiskey. So, I try not to age too long, so that loses that characteristic
Leafbox:The Shochu?
Ken-san:The shochu.
Leafbox:Is that considered a new technique? The casking? Even in Japan, they've been...
Ken-san:Yeah, especially the mugi guys, mugi is the barley shochu guys, sometimes they age in a barrel.
Leafbox:So, they're trying to make more a whiskey flavor?
Ken-san:More like it. Yeah.
Leafbox:Interesting. Is that because of Western influence?
Ken-san:I think so, because people have been drinking whiskey long in Japan. But the barley shochu guys don't age as long and as dark as whiskey guys. It's very light. So, the color is really light.
Leafbox:And they're probably reusing the... Well, because the issue with whiskey, it just becomes so expensive.
Ken-san:The barrels?
Leafbox:Well, the warehousing costs.
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:If you have 10 years or five years. So, you're making six months, 3,000, the economics are a little smoother.
Ken-san:Right. And then I think tax category changes in Japan under the liquor law. As long as it's shochu, I think tax is lower. If it gets darker, it's categorize as whiskey, so you have to pay higher tax I think before. I'm not sure right now.
Leafbox:I had a question about how do you find the permitting process in the US for liquor production?
Ken-san:I just have to ask.
Leafbox:I know, but are you happy with it? Because many people find the TTB and the licensing very complicated.
Ken-san:Yeah, very complicated. Yeah.
Leafbox:So, you just went through a ganbaru, you just did it?
Ken-san:Yeah, because I didn't know anybody.
Leafbox:Got it.
Ken-san:So, I just did just all the paperwork.
Leafbox:Did you have any people, or when you called them, they didn't understand why you were making Shochu?
Ken-san:Yeah, because Shochu was not established. I mean, it's still not. So, that was tough. But Hawaii people have been really nice and supportive and they're really kind to me. So, as long as Hawaii is considered, it was okay. But the federal side was kind of tough.
Leafbox:Yeah, they have very complicated... The TTB.
Ken-san:Yeah, no local office here.
Leafbox:No, I understand, because when we had to do our brewery, it was bottling rules, everything is so complicated.
Ken-san:I still don't understand.
Leafbox:The labeling, well, you have to hire a lawyer and then they help you.
Ken-san:We didn't have money to hire a lawyer so I just had to... But they were helpful.Leafbox:Yeah, they want you to open, it's just sometimes...
Ken-san:So, I had to get the approval of labels and everything.Leafbox:Yeah, well, once you learn, it's not so hard, but, interesting. You're like a pioneer.
Ken-san:Not really, I just had to do it.
Leafbox:Do it. So, I'm just curious, how do you find the business climate in Hawaii? Is it positive then?
Ken-san:To us, yeah, Hawaii people have been really, again, supportive for this type of small businesses. I know that cost wise it's high compared to Japan or maybe mainland, I don't know. But the people have been really nice.
Leafbox:Any challenges that you wish you had known about earlier when you opened? How many years have you had the...
Ken-san:This is the 10th year.
Leafbox:!10th year. Nice. Congrats.
Ken-san:Arigato. Yeah, everything was a challenge in the beginning because I didn't know anything about Shochu. So, it's okay, because I just didn't know anything, so it was natural that everything became challenges.
Leafbox:And why didn't you want to start maybe the brewery in Japan? Did you find…
Ken-san:Well, I had no interest in making Shochu in Japan. I just wanted to make Shochu in Hawaii.
Leafbox:Got it.
Ken-san:So, that was the first objective or goal.
Leafbox:Do you think because of the local market need or just the sweet potatoes or you wanted to live here?
Ken-san:All the combinations there. I thought Hawaii would be a great place to make sweet potato shochu, because we can source the local sweet potatoes and the water quality is pretty good, the climate, perfect for shochu making. Yeah. And living in Hawaii, making shochu, would be nice.
Leafbox:Nice. Is anyone making herbal additions to Shochus or anything like that?
Ken-san:Herbal addition?
Leafbox:Like amaros, once you take your high proof, so once you distill, you're adding water to dilute the-
Ken-san:Dilute to 30%. For regular, yeah.
Leafbox:Yeah.
Ken-san:This is more like a cask strength. So, it's a still strength.
Leafbox:But you know amaros, like a Campari, they add herbal...
Ken-san:We made gin.
Leafbox:So, you've done with juniper and things?
Ken-san:Juniper and Hawaii grown botanicals.
Leafbox:Great. Does your license allow you to make that?
Ken-san:I think so.
Leafbox:Well, you have a distiller's license.
Ken-san:Yeah. So, I thought it was okay. So, this is something we made last year.
Leafbox:This is beautiful. Look at the bottle.
Ken-san:Because one of our customers happened to be the owner of a distilling equipment company in Canada. He came six, seven years ago, and he offered us this piece of equipment. So, he ship it to us last year.
Leafbox:And with that you could make the gin.
Ken-san:And then at the same time we had a guest from Kyoto, he's the owner of Kyoto Distillery, first gin distillery in Japan. He came and he invited me to his place in Kyoto. So, I went there four or five years ago and I learned the gin making process. So, I thought, well, it would be good to make gin one day. And this came and I thought, oh, let's make gin. Because I enjoy making and drinking gin.
Leafbox:Nice. And then where did you get the juniper from?
Ken-san:The juniper was imported from Italy, but other botanicals, mainly we use Hawaii grown ones.
Leafbox:Interesting. I'll have to read that, yeah. Because I've been making some amaros at home.
Ken-san:What is that?
Leafbox:Amaro, it's a category of a digestif.
Ken-san:Campari?
Leafbox:Campari is an amaro. Fernet is an amaro. There's hundreds of amaros, amaro, nonino.
Leafbox:Amaro is a category. It's like a digestif or aperitif.
Ken-san:Is that like a liqueur?
Leafbox:It's a liqueur, it's not like champagne that comes from one place, amaro could be Bonal, there's many, hundreds. So, all you do is take a high liquor, high proof spirit, usually they make that and then they add different medical herbs.
Ken-san:Just like gin?
Leafbox:Yeah, but the flavor is very... Amaro stands for bitter. So, gins can be bitter also, but it's interesting, usually they have a red color because some of the herbal ingredients you get.
Ken-san:Like Campari, yeah.
Leafbox:Yeah, Campari obviously, that uses the shell or seeds to get that color. So, you age it and, same, you can cask it. Anyway, I like amaros a lot, they're very popular in cocktails like a Manhattan or vermouths kind of thing. So, I was just curious if anyone is making that with shochu, if you take your 80 proof...Ken-san:Yeah, 80 proof is low though.
Leafbox:I know, you need 100 to really get the flavors out. So, I was curious of what they're doing in Japan. Because I know in Japan there's a few amaro makers now.Ken-san:I think Kyoto Distilleries, this Kyoto Distillery, they make gin, but just like many Gin makers, they outsource the alcohol. They can buy alcohol made from rice. The proofing is really high.
Leafbox:Then they can add the sugar and the flavors and the water. So, it's interesting, then the branding.
Ken-san:So, probably those guys outsource, they buy higher proof alcohol made from rice. It's widely available in Japan, so they can make amaros or whatever.
Leafbox:Any digestif or liqueurs or whatever. Interesting. Anyway, sorry, interesting. I was just curious what herbs that people can add. Yeah, very fascinating. And then are you happy with the business or do you have growth plans, or export? I'm just curious, what's the next 10 years for the business?
Ken-san:Next 10 years, I just want to maybe increase the production just a little bit, but not double the size or anything, we just want to keep it pretty close to as it is and enjoy the life.
Leafbox:Have you had any apprentices?
Ken-san:No, I'm not a master.
Leafbox:But no one's come to...
Ken-san:People contact me, but many of them are not really serious, because many say, "I'm going to Hawaii for vacation for two weeks, can I learn Shochu making?" I don't take it as serious.
Leafbox:No, unless the guy lives here and moves one year at least, yeah.
Ken-san:So, it's hard.
Leafbox:Do you ever hire workers to help you?
Ken-san:No. I have some people who are on the payroll, my friends, they help me in bottling or filling when we're really busy.
Leafbox:Packaging.
Ken-san:Yeah. Packaging, my wife and I.
Leafbox:Nice.
Ken-san:Basically just me. Yeah, when we're busy doing our really big stuff, friends come, that's it.
Leafbox:And then your distribution is 100% only sold here, right?
Ken-san:20% goes to the distributor, and they distribute to the restaurants and businesses, like restaurants, hotels, bars, in Hawaii. 80% is sold right here, I'm the salesperson.
Leafbox:And then how did you select your distributor? They came to you?
Ken-san:Yeah, I think we had a connection, my master had a connection. So, they distribute it to the restaurants in Hawaii. No retail stores.
Leafbox:Yeah. Well, that can introduce licensing issues with the...
Ken-san:No, just the volume side, our volume is so small it's hard for us to sell to a wholesaler.
Leafbox:Yeah, plus your margin would be much higher.
Ken-san:Yeah, if we sell more to the wholesale, we go into the red due to the volume.
Leafbox:And then looking back on the last 10 years, are there any things you wish you had known? I'm just curious.
Ken-san:Everything, yeah. I wish I had known everything.
Leafbox:Specifically?
Ken-san:I don't know, I wish that I'd known that COVID was coming.
Leafbox:Yeah, well, how has COVID affected your business?
Ken-san:It's changed our plan, yeah, because we lost our orders from the businesses, and many orders from international customers, especially from the Asian countries, mostly from Japan. So, maybe 40% we lost. But people have been really supportive here, so it ended up okay.
Leafbox:Did you get support from PPE loans or anything?
Ken-san:Yeah, we did, yeah, that helped us a lot.
Leafbox:Was there any positive things from COVID, business wise or experience?
Ken-san:Yeah, always, yeah. People, after you go through hardship, you learn something.
Leafbox:What did you learn? Anything?
Ken-san:That's a good question. I hope I learned something.
Leafbox:Still thinking about it.
Ken-san:Yeah. I hope I did learn something.
Leafbox:Are there any new processes you're learning now that you want to?
Ken-san:Yeah, every day is still a challenge, I'm not a master guy, so every single stage, I put so much thoughts into... Even just this is my new thing, I experiment something new.
Leafbox:How do you maintain that beginner's mindset?
Ken-san:Because I still feel I'm a beginner.
Leafbox:I think that's a cultural difference because sometimes maybe the Western perspective is after a few years they think they're the expert. So, I'm just curious.
Ken-san:I wish I could say that, but, no, it's not really simple. It looks simple but every single thing, every single stage is different. Yeah.
Leafbox:In the brewing community there's online forums. Many of the beer people talk to each other a lot, share tips, share ideas, is that happening in the Shochu world or is everyone secret?
Ken-san:If you are in Japan, yeah, those Shochu makers, sake makers, they help each other, have a workshop and stuff. But I'm so isolated here, so not much, I just talk to my master.
Leafbox:Got it.
Ken-san:Yeah, and master's sons.
Leafbox:And have they been here to visit?
Ken-san:Yeah, they use me as an excuse to come to Hawaii every year.
Leafbox:Nice.
Ken-san:So, I get to see them. Whenever I go to Japan, I go to seem them too in Kagoshima.
Leafbox:Interesting, cool. No, I have many questions to ask.
Ken-san:That helps.
Leafbox:Yeah, I think it's interesting to learn about who the person is making the spirit, because I think if you're a small business, it's...
Ken-san:It's a very tiny distillery.
Leafbox:Yeah, but that feels like an honest product, right?
Ken-san:Every single thing, everything we bottle, it goes through me, so, yeah.
Leafbox:So, what's the best way to drink your Shochu?
Ken-san:Usually shochu, we sip while we eat, the authentic shochu, during the meal. So, we tend to make it lighter by adding lots of ice, on the rocks, or something ice water, or even hot water in the traditional way. So, you can enjoy different ways. Some people make cocktails, but usually I sip with the food, during the dinner.
Leafbox:Nice. And then since you live in Hawaii, what other parts of Hawaiian life do you participate in? Surfing or hunting?
Ken-san:I surf but I'm not that good, I'm not bad, I'm not good. Especially the North shore, those guys are really good, so I get depressed every time I go surfing, because the guys are really good.
Leafbox:Yeah, but it's okay, it's just for fun.
Ken-san:Yeah, it's okay. But it's just like, I'm so jealous of it.
Leafbox:Do you hunt at all?
Ken-san:No.
Leafbox:Gardening?
Ken-san:No, not much.
Leafbox:And then your family relationship, no children?
Ken-san:No children, only adult.
Leafbox:Great. And what was your wife's reaction when she first heard your plan?
Ken-san:Nothing much, she said, "That will be fun," that's it, "Let's go."
Leafbox:Great, lucky guy.
Ken-san:Lucky me, yeah. She's been really supportive.
Leafbox:Do you think maybe most Japanese people take the safer route of a salary man? How do you explain your deviation or willingness to start a business? Where does that come from, was your family...
Ken-san:Yeah, my father owned a company too, so I was not born in a salary man's family. He had his own business.
Leafbox:Got it, so you had that experience doing that.
Ken-san:Yeah, so I never thought starting a business is a challenge or something. It's a fun thing.
Leafbox:And maybe last question, if someone was to start a business, what's your number one advice?
Ken-san:Prepare well.
Leafbox:And how do you prepare well?
Ken-san:Prepare better. Yeah. Preparation is the most key thing if you want to start a business. Of course, Shochu making, prepare, prepare, prepare.
Leafbox:And then how do you know when you're ready to jump?
Ken-san:You still prepare while you're jumping, yeah. Do you know what I'm saying?
Leafbox:Yeah, it's like a parachute, you build the parachute as you're jumping off the plane.
Ken-san:Not like a safety device, but you have to think about all the options and just prepare, you just have to clean and get ready in case something happens, so your mind is always, if something really bad happens, you don't get really too anxious or something. I don't know.
Leafbox:And how did you choose this location on the North shore?
Ken-san:We were really lucky. We looked for all the islands, but hard to find, but one of our friends who knew the landowner, and they offered us this piece of land. So, we lease from Kamehameha Schools.
Leafbox:Really? This is Kamehameha Lands?
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:Nice.
Ken-san:And they have been really nice.
Leafbox:And then did you build the bodega or the warehouse?
Ken-san:Yeah, we built this.
Leafbox:Great.
Ken-san:That's why we're up to here still, all the debt.
Leafbox:Debt, got it.
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:Nice. Great, maybe we can take a little tour, or you show me the mash tuns or the kōji room and I can take some more photos?
Ken-san:Yeah, so the first step in Shochu making, as I said, we make kōji. So, we steam the rice with this, this is a rice steamer. I have pictures, Yeah, so this is the rice we use.
Leafbox:Nice.
Leafbox:You don't want to contaminate. This is beautiful.
Ken-san:But this is junk though, we built this. If you go to Japan and visit those sake breweries or Shochu distilleries, traditional ones, they have really nice kōji rooms. Cedar lined, sometimes hinoki, really nice. This, we built this, so it's not that good, but it works.
Leafbox:And here's where you're flipping the rice?
Ken-san:Yeah. So, this is what it looks like when we sprinkle the kōji starter.
Leafbox:Got it.
Ken-san:This one is black type of kōji. We use black and white. Shochu makers use three types, black, white, and the yellow. But here, Hawaii is warm, so we only use black and white. The yellow one is usually used for sake. So, no yellow ones, because we don't have temperature control devices here.
Leafbox:What's the temperature in there right now?
Ken-san:86 to 90, depending on the stage.
Leafbox:Got it.
Ken-san:Yeah, so we use those vents, one, two, three, four in the walls, on the ceiling, just to control. Yeah, we use fingers, if it's too chilly, I only put one finger wide, and two finger wide, and that's how it is. And after we massage well, I divide that rice into these trays in the back, and I come in here every three, four hours, and do all kinds of stuff, like change the way I stack up these trays. Sometimes I change the shape of the rice inside.
Leafbox:What does the staging do of the koji?
Ken-san:Just in order to achieve rapid and even kōji growth, yeah.
Leafbox:And you're doing this every three hours, you say, right?
Ken-san:Every three, four hours. Yeah, and this is what it looks like when kōji rice is ready after 48 hours. So, it takes two nights, 48 hours, to convert the rice koji?
Leafbox:Do you smell a vinegary smell?
Ken-san:Not that sour smell, it's more like a sweet smell. It's not that bad.
Leafbox:Yeah.
Ken-san:Yeah. Once you smell sour stuff, it's not a good sign, it might be contaminated. Fortunately nothing like that happened so far.
Leafbox:Do you taste the rice?
Ken-san:Yeah, it's kind of bitter and sour.
Leafbox:A little bit.
Ken-san:Yeah. Bitter and sour, because it produces acid. And these are the vats my master gave us, they all came from Kagoshima, Japan, and they are about 150 years old.
Leafbox:And you shipped these here?
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:Wow.
Ken-san:From Kagoshima.
Leafbox:That must have been very difficult.
Ken-san:Yeah, we were so happy to see them all, they all came in all intact.
Leafbox:And then what is around them underneath? Is that dirt?
Ken-san:Dirt. Yeah, the concrete is only this thick.
Leafbox:On the top there?
Ken-san:Yeah, the concrete is only this thick, and then this is all dirt.
Leafbox:And that helps with the temperature management as well?
Ken-san:Yeah, that's exactly right, and easy to work out, because it cannot be stood up by itself.
Leafbox:How do you clean these?
Ken-san:I put clean shoes and go inside and scrub.
Leafbox:Got it. Brewing is 90% cleaning.
Ken-san:Yeah. I'm like a janitor here.
Leafbox:I know, I understand.
Ken-san:People think this is a fancy job, but it's not.
Leafbox:No, it's just cleaning.
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:And it has to be very clean and then clean it again.
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:Yeah.
Ken-san:I do all the cleaning, so I know what it is.
Leafbox:Do you use any specialized brewing cleaning?
Ken-san:Mm-mm.
Leafbox:Maybe just for the metal tanks, right?
Ken-san:Yeah, for those, we use those BSG.
Leafbox:They're citrus based? Yeah.
Ken-san:Yeah. Until now, this came, so we use that for that, but for others, just the regular...
Leafbox:Got it. Yeah.
Ken-san:This is the momori when we take the rice out to this area. And then we put all this into one and add water and the yeast, and let it ferment one week.
Leafbox:What's the ratio there usually?
Ken-san:Water and rice?
Leafbox:Yeah, roughly.
Ken-san:About one to one. Liters, yeah?
Leafbox:Yeah, that's fine, so one liter of rice, you put one liter of water.
Ken-san:One liter of rice... That's a good question.
Leafbox:For one kilo of rice.
Ken-san:One kilo per one liter maybe. It depends on the rice.
Leafbox:When you're steaming the rice, do you wash the rice several times?
Ken-san:Yeah, I have to wash the rice nice and clean before we steam the rice.
Leafbox:Do you use the starch water for anything or just throw it in the plants, or?
Ken-san:Just clean water.
Leafbox:No, I mean when you wash the rice, do you use that? Put it to the plants or something?
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:Do you filter the water?
Ken-san:Yeah, we use filtered water as well.
Leafbox:Nice. Yeah, you don't want the flavor profile from the water.
Ken-san:So, this is what it looks like after one week.
Leafbox:Wild.
Ken-san:Black kōji makes it look dark, yeah? With white kōji it would make it white. This stage, about 10% alcohol, the taste is like unrefined sake, because only kōji rice is brewed. So, while we are waiting, we prepare sweet potatoes. So, this is the farm, this is us, I don't do farming though.
Leafbox:Yeah, of course.
Ken-san:Yeah, too much, I might die if we had to. Luckily enough we get to work with the local suppliers, growers. And as I said, many varieties of sweet potatoes in Hawaii. So, each batch is slightly different. For this batch, the pallet came from Moloka‘i.
Leafbox:Yeah, beautiful.
Ken-san:The sweet potato came from the big island. So, this batch we blended two varieties. And then we used lots of purple, Okinawa sweet potatoes. For 200 pounds of rice we use about 1,000 pounds of sweet potatoes, after we clean and, we steam. After we steam...
Leafbox:Where's your steamer?
Ken-san:Outside.
Leafbox:Okay, got it.
Ken-san:After we steam, we put all the steamed sweet potatoes and add this fermented kōji rice to them and mix together. At that time we use these sticks to make it mash.
Leafbox:Got it, so that's where you're making the mash?
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:That's why you were talking about the industrial process, you're still doing it by hand, before you could pump it and...
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:But this is fine, for the scale, yeah. Beautiful. So, this is the-
Ken-san:The mash.
Leafbox:And that's called the moromi?
Ken-san:Moromi.
Leafbox:Moromi.
Ken-san:First moromi. We call this first moromi.
Leafbox:First one, and the second.
Ken-san:Second moromi.
Leafbox:Yeah, the color is so beautiful.
Ken-san:Yeah, with purple ones, nice color. And then we let this mash ferment. I have a video somewhere. That's how it's fermented, it gets really up to.
Leafbox:That's amazing.
Ken-san:Yeah, and then this time, the temperature was going up, so I was chilling with the coil, you see?
Leafbox:Yeah, that's just with the water, so you don't use any glycol systems or anything?
Ken-san:No, just run the tap water to chill. Maybe two nights at most. And then we use these wooden pot still.
Leafbox:So, you pump it?
Ken-san:Yeah. To here. And it's distilled.
Leafbox:Yeah.
Ken-san:And then shochu comes out from here.
Leafbox:Got it.
Ken-san:And another thing is we distill only one time.
Leafbox:Why do you put it in these, instead of... You just pump in and then pump it into this as well?
Ken-san:Yeah, and because I have to check the scale.
Leafbox:Alcohol level?
Ken-san:Check the alcohol level and the condition first before we pump it to the bigger tank.
Leafbox:And then when do you add the water?
Ken-san:Before the bottling session.
Leafbox:And you do flavors and try to adjust?
Ken-san:Yeah, no flavoring, nothing.
Leafbox:No, I mean not flavoring but you're tasting to get to the right...
Ken-san:Yeah. And usually we collect around 38 to 39 or 40, and put it here.
Leafbox:What are the tools for measuring the alcohol you're using?
Ken-san:Just a hydrometer.
Leafbox:Hydrometer. What do they use in Japan, the same?
Ken-san:The same, but these days, guys use high tech wands.
Leafbox:Digital or something.
Ken-san:Like Kō Hana guys, they have really nice machines.
Leafbox:Got it. I was just curious what traditional techniques they had to measure alcohol.
Ken-san:Hydrometer, yeah, I think. As long as I know, yeah.
Leafbox:Got it.
Ken-san:Yeah, that's it.
Leafbox:And then bottling?
Ken-san:Right here. We just finished bottling.
Leafbox:Got it.
Ken-san:So, this one is empty, so we're going to start making again next month.
Leafbox:Nice. Great. What is this kanji here?
Ken-san:That's our brand name, Namihana.
Leafbox:Namihana.
Ken-san:Nami means wave, hana means flower.
Leafbox:Flower. Wave Flower, yeah. And how did you come up with the name?
Ken-san:That's a good question. Yeah, we thought about the names, but Hawaii local people told us to name Japanese names, a Japanese name, and the symbol of the North shore is Nami, and Hawaii has lots of beautiful flowers. So, two symbols of Hawaii.
Leafbox:It's a good name, Namihana. Who drew the kanji? Did you?
Ken-san:That's a good friend of my master, he's a famous potter, he donated his calligraphy when my master told him that I'm doing this. So, we used that for our label.Leafbox:Great.
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:Anything else, Ken, you want to add?
Ken-san:No, you can be creative.
Leafbox:No, I think you have a beautiful little operation. Our brewery is a bigger operation, but same process. We never distill though, the licensing requirements for distillation are just so complicated. Maybe Hawaii is easier than other states.
Ken-san:I'm not sure, because I don't know anything about how it works on the other...
Leafbox:It's the same, it's the TTB, they're the licensing, I just find it, maybe in Japan easier…
Ken-san:Japan is hard.
Leafbox:The licensing also?
Ken-san:Licensing is horrible.
Leafbox:Why is that?
Ken-san:I don't know, the government try to control alcohol productions, they limit it. Yeah, so it's hard to get a new license, so you have to either buy from the existing breweries or distilleries quitting, or you have to work in a special area.Leafbox:Nice.
Ken-san:Yeah because within Kagoshima Prefecture you can find over 100 distilleries, Shochu distilleries. Kagoshima is like Hawaii, that's how much they like to drink.
Leafbox:Rural people, yeah. Japanese people drink a lot actually, surprisingly.
Ken-san:Yeah.
Leafbox:Great.
Ken-san:Lots of beer and sake.
Leafbox:Anyway, Ken, thank you so much. Sorry for all my questions, this may be... Yeah.
Ken-san:I'm not used to being asked that much questions, so I hope I was able to answer.
Leafbox:No, perfect, yeah, there's no right or wrong, just interesting to learn, so.
Thanks to the Hawaiian SHOCHU Company for hosting.
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