Meeting The Potato, Talking to Plants, and Why Compassion is Humanity with Joe Rowland

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What if the drive for digital and agricultural perfection one and the same? What if the industrial complex, the "machine," is more than the technology that surrounds us but the technological identity working, slithering, oozing, its way out of us?

In this episode, Joe and Daniel examine the complexities of recycling, sustainability, and regenerative agriculture. Hear our (Joe's!) candid reflections on the tension between immediate health concerns and the long-term environmental goals of the "green movements," questioning the authenticity of current regenerative movements. Our conversation emphasizes the importance of genuine ecological efforts over profit-driven motives, urging for a sincere commitment to ecological balance, to finding ourselves.

Join us as we challenge traditional, patriarchal values and explore a more connected, holistic way of living. Reflecting on personal experiences and drawing inspiration from indigenous perspectives, we discuss how the quest for perfection can overshadow meaningful relationships and self-worth. We highlight the potential for living in harmony with our environment and emphasize the importance of active participation in our community discussions on The Wildland Chronicles. Thank you for your support!

We would love to know your thoughts on this conversation! Drop a thought or question below in the comments section :D

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

So many podcasts today are business conversations. We jump on Zoom, say what we are expected to say and then, when the lights turn off and the record button closes down, we say something else entirely. We all misspeak. I do it quite often, stumbling over my twisted tongue, but misspeaking is not misrepresenting. The digital age, a product of machine minds, allows conversations to become shows and shows to become ideals that do not and can not exist in the reality of things.

Speaker 1: 0:45

The actual world around us, in us, as us, it is a mirage, a delusion. It is not entirely dissimilar from the mainstream media that perverts truths into soundbites and the human story into news cycles. It is not entirely dissimilar to the green agricultural movements of today that push farmers into isolated columns of production or even pushes the ever-romantic narrative that farmers can save the world. The world as if soil health can defeat industrial capitalism or human greed. It's so unreal, it's so inhuman in the real sense, like the world we have created around us. To give attention to life, actual life, and to give attention to the truth and the pain and the grief and the glitter that each of us carry, we must approach creativity, curiosity and compassion in conversation, but we must approach this ground unshot.

Speaker 2: 2:11

I have some experience. I had a podcast for a little bit. This is not your first podcast. I was in a band and we recorded a few records and so like singing and having headsets or earpieces in and stuff, what kind of music Like all country it was like 15 years ago Really of just dirty drunken like southern rock and roll. Bluesy kind of rock and roll stuff is there is there any way we can find it is it?

Speaker 1: 2:35

yeah, you can exist in the digital world god, you can.

Speaker 2: 2:38

but you know you probably know for sure what it feels like as a, as an author, to have to look back at yourself and the things you were feeling and thinking and putting out in the world 15 years prior and you're so far removed from it now that it just makes you cringe and you have to respect it, because it was where you were and who you were then. It's like looking at high school photos. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, but yes, you can find it, it's on Spotify, um. Looking at high school photos, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, but yes, you can find it, it's on spotify, um, but I'll, I'll share it with you, um, maybe let's, let's have you think about it.

Speaker 1: 3:09

No, but that's a really interesting point because, like life, which I interact with as a human, so like my human experience, is an evolutionary process. I mean micro evolution, right, like you're describing. Sure, the art that I was putting out 15 years ago is not the art that I'm putting out today, right, process. And I mean micro evolution, right, like you're describing. Sure, the art that I was putting out 15 years ago is not the art that I'm putting out today, right, maybe the person who I was 15 years ago is still the same person I am today, but maybe better understood, maybe just older, maybe not so stupid or maybe even more stupid, but I know it now. Like, yeah, but like in the digital world, we can't delete that. Right, it's an interesting reality. It's you almost become petrified to evolve, does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 3:55

Am I making sense, I guess. So I mean, if you, if you cause it's?

Speaker 1: 3:59

if you look at it like you've pigeonholed yourself.

Speaker 2: 4:05

You're frozen in time as this, then are you? Do you almost second guess yourself to come out of something new now? Does it cheapen what I was?

Speaker 1: 4:09

and who I was, then that's what it doesn't because every day we're changing.

Speaker 2: 4:12

And if we're not changing, I mean, there's millions of cliches. But if we're not changing every day, what are we doing? Yeah right, everything is changing. Plant populations and species are changing all the time. Animal species, like everything, is changing. Plant populations and species are changing all the time. Animal species, like everything is changing around us. The climate is changing all around us and we think we affect it. We don't know, like, in the short term and the long term, you know hottest summers in 10 years? Well, there's been. How, like we can't agree on how many years there's been? Has there been 2000 or 2500 years, or has there been 60 billion or whatever?

Speaker 1: 4:43

You know what I mean. I don't.

Speaker 2: 4:45

I'm not a scientist, so I'm just throwing numbers out here, but you look good, oh thanks. Yeah, you too Appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 4:50

Yeah, so I mean we're talking now, joe, because, um, I mean I'm down here in North Carolina teaching a course, there's a big concert happening outside this building that I'm kind of glad you can't hear. Yeah, although if we do get some good rhythms and get some good jams, I'll be pretty cool. Maybe we'll work on maybe not trying to hide it in the in the final production. And I gave a speech about a book that I had recently written, and then the individual who hosted the conversation, ashton Thompson, here at Juneberry Ridge, was like, hey, you need to meet this guy, and maybe 13 seconds into meeting you, I literally asked for your business card so we can do a podcast. And then, uh, I saw you sitting on the grass all by yourself and I was like, no, now, let's talk now. So we're doing that. That's what. That's what this is.

Speaker 2: 5:33

I love it. It's a great way to do it. Yeah, meet like minds, get in a room together, and I love people that want to throw out big ideas. If I can meet you and immediately want to talk about like your deepest, darkest secrets, yeah, that's great. I don't really do well with like so how's the weather in virginia? Like, what's the? I'm bad at small talk. I want to know, like, what hurts you most? What like challenge? Like what are you so excited about? And that gets me really excited when we can start talking about like essence, essence, you know what I mean. Like I love the essence of things. Like that's what we're here for, in my opinion.

Speaker 1: 6:09

Yeah which is strangely like evolutive. It's a big word, yeah, yeah, I don't even know if it is a word I like it.

Speaker 1: 6:20

You mean it evolving, it needs to evolve and I'm not saying that it, you know, as a source needs to evolve, but our understanding to it, our relationship to it, our understanding of how we fit in relationship to it, this essence right, is a process that I think we unpack over great periods of time, but I think in the modern age we were talking about this before we, you know, we were walking up here, like this idea of climate change, like no, no. Here, like this idea of climate change, like oh, no, no, no, I'm sorry, you were. You mentioned this to me after the speech. It's all kind of coming together, running together. You were. You were mentioning that none of the climate solutions that we're currently proposing will be able to be determined that they were successful in our lifetime.

Speaker 2: 6:57

In my opinion? Yeah, I don't think we're.

Speaker 1: 6:59

I don't think it's your opinion.

Speaker 2: 7:00

I don't think we'll ever know right Like we're. But does that mean that I don't do it? No, I recycle, even though you read the reports. In the last couple of years China stopped buying it and it all goes to the landfill. But guess what I do it? Maybe it's because I'm a child of the eighties and nineties and it was just burned into our brains. But no, I do it because every little bit helps and because I give a shit enough to stop and put myself through a little bit of discomfort to walk over here and put it in this bin and roll two bins out to the curb, because I care about you and this gentleman over here and our children and the animals and the plants that live around here.

Speaker 2: 7:36

And it feels like to me it's the least I could do to get to inhabit this place and it makes me sad and angry when other people don't. And I feel like we're in a really scary place now where the movement if we want to talk agriculture for just a second but the movement is going towards all regenerative, all carbon-based, all we're going to save the world. And I don't think we'll ever know if we're right or wrong and I think our history shows us that when we get these big ideas and we run in a direction, it takes a lot of tweaking to get it right and we find out in a generation that we got it close but it's still not right and we've been, for it feels like a generation working on things like organics and reducing pesticides and GMOs and things that we know have a direct impact on human health in the now, right now. Today, let's get microplastics out of our body, let's get glyphosate out of my daughter's food, right Like those are things that I can affect and you can and we can today. And if I don't till and I believe in all these things, so I'm not poo-pooing it Like I believe in all of the tenantsets, the six tenets of regenerative, I believe in all of that.

Speaker 2: 8:46

I've been an organic grower for 15 years. But if we push all of those things to the side and say I'm not going to till and I'm going to get more earthworms and increase my organic matter a little bit and we're going to sequester more carbon and save the world, world, yeah, but a lot of us are going to still have cancer and a lot of us are going to be obese and unhealthy and depressed and anxious and upset along the way and maybe we save this planet. But, man, that's ballsy. That's ballsy to say that, like Elon Musk is going to save the planet and if he doesn't, he's going to fly us to Mars and start over like the. How can you have that level of? Is the word hubris?

Speaker 2: 9:29

I don't know just to say like I, I, this minuscule creature, one of seven billion or eight billion yeah, I'm no better, I my opinion than an insect, than an animal, than a crop. We're interwoven. So to pull myself out of it and literally declare that I, if I can't fix it, I'll just go and create it again, that is so disrespectful to anything you believe. I'm not very religious, but Mother Nature is my creator, in my opinion. I don't know what fuels all this, but thank God, it does. I said thank God, thank mother nature, it does. And so I get frustrated because that's a good way to push things to the side and we all focus on regenerative labels, and I want regenerative to be certified. I believe in it, but I want you to be inspected. I want to know that it's legit, and not because I believe in big government and politics, but because I want to know that it makes the impact, because I want to try to make an impact for the better in this world.

Speaker 1: 10:37

A huge awakening we had, my wife and I. We used to perform ecological outcome verification for a lot of farms. We used to perform ecological outcome verification for a lot of farms and, to some large degree, eov for short is, to some degree, the third party coming in to measure regeneration, to make sure that the farmers who are trying to regenerate are actually regenerating. And don't get me wrong the first reason we do this is for the farmer's sake, because if you care about doing something and yet you don't understand how to monitor that, that thing that you're doing to get to a particular end has arrived at that end or is even in the journey to getting to that end. Well, knowing where you are in the pathways of great advantage to you, right, how are you supposed to regenerate if, uh, if you don't know if you're regenerating? Like, to some degree, this is that farmer feedback loop that it has provided for many farms, but, but it also is emerging into a market, right, right, and that market and I say this personally to the people and I say this publicly on the podcast it is destroying everything that I believe in, because what they're doing is we're not regenerating because it's good, okay.

Speaker 1: 11:37

We're regenerating because it's profitable, we're regenerating because it gives us a label and a market opportunity, okay, and as long as we don't care about a thing's thingness but I only care about, it's the thing's thingness that derives me pleasure and opportunity, profit and market then I wonder if I really even care about regeneration and if regeneration is truly a one living system, as Kerry Taylor has written in a marvelous book, right, like if this really is just one living system and regeneration can't exist outside of this system, then if I'm only in this one living system to extract and control, how are we not waking up to the fact that regeneration as it sits today in this movement is just the colonizer's worldview and mindset, writ in a different language to saving a world.

Speaker 1: 12:23

And nobody ever stops to ask like what world are we saving? Let's pretend you can save the world and I want to pose this question to you what world? Through your 15 years of of being a grower? Let's pretend you're wonderful, you have heaven on earth, your farm's the best and you make all of the money and you speak at all the conferences and everybody cares about you because you're a wonderful white guy.

Speaker 2: 12:52

Like what world did you save? Right, we did, I didn't. That's why I'm not a full-time farmer anymore is because, after 10 years of dedicating every waking moment blood, sweat and tears ruining a marriage, just like beating my chest, putting my name on the big sign being the big white guy on the tractor, everything that watching my chest putting my name on the big sign being the big white guy on the tractor, everything that watching my grandfather, who I love and have this amazing connection to.

Speaker 2: 13:10

He was a farmer and so I wanted to be like that. But he was a farmer, you know, in the fifties and sixties and seventies and eighties. And then I think about my grandmother and their dynamic and it's like that's not the world that we live in anymore and I don't think it's the world that a lot of us want to live in or that we should live in. But I had that idea, that patriarchal drive, and I was just told like, go be more, bigger, faster, better. And so I went and did that and I just ran over people. I didn't think about relationships, I thought about making this farm really good and what I realized was I was trying to make myself feel better. It was like if I put a bad tomato on the table, I was a bad person, I wasn't good enough in this world, and when I put the best tomato on the table, I was enough. When the customers came to me. It's like performance.

Speaker 2: 13:57

I practiced all week on the farm and then Saturday at the market I get to perform and they're all there adoring me and giving me money and it was just my ego running wild but deep down like I. I I wanted to help and change, but I got caught up and I got carried away and I was young and idealistic and you know, it's just, I got, I got caught up in the whole thing. You know, it's just, I got, I got caught up in the whole thing. And I guess to your question, that's the world I think a lot of us are trying to save and on the walk up here we were discussing the fact that that's a huge assumption, that that's the world that we actually live in and it's only that world because we all agree and act every day that it is yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:47

Go deeper there. What do you mean? That world, that world that we all agree that we exist in, Like? What is that world?

Speaker 2: 14:53

I mean it's everything. It's everything and not to get, I mean some people.

Speaker 1: 14:59

anybody listening to this podcast is probably going to be right there with us, but to people on the outside they're like what are you talking about?

Speaker 2: 15:03

You want to. To the people on the outside they're like what are you talking about? Because it's everything we do. It's our economy, it's the housing we live in, the way we communicate with each other, the family units that we have these days, it's like what we endeavor to do. I heard somebody say oh, what is his name? Gentleman in the Mountains, joe Hollis Mountain Gardens. He passed away, but I think I heard on one of his podcasts. He said don't ask me who I am. Ask me, like, where I am. Don't ask me what I do for a living. Ask me where I do it. And what he was saying was like tell me about where you exist, tell me about your roots, tell me about the land you exist on. Tell me things that, like to an indigenous population, probably would have been everything to them.

Speaker 2: 15:43

We live on the ridge over there, near the, near the stream where the deer run in the summer. You know like they knew themselves based on being part of that fabric, and we don't, we know ourselves now by you said it earlier in your talk by like being the creatures that go inside in the air condition and shut themselves off from that. And when we do that we lose humanity, compassion, sympathy. We lose that part of who we are, because now they are the other and we know what our society does to the other. Whatever that other is, we know how we treat them. And so if the world we live in becomes the other, whatever the other is, we know how we treat them. And so if the world we live in becomes the other and we are this dominant species, you see, you see the way what we do in a few thousand years, and you see what indigenous people do, you know what's the book from China Farmers of 40.

Speaker 2: 16:42

Centuries right, the same plot of land, the same crops, not a big rotation, Like I don't know. I wasn't there so I may be speaking on a term, but for 4,000 years. And now we're saying, like you got to rotate crops every three years or else it's all, it's blasted Right, and I'm a consultant, I do that every day. I tell people can't plant your tomatoes there next year or the year after that or the year after that. You got next year or the year after that or the year after that, you got to buy this fertilizer because this is the way it's going to grow. And then you stop and go like, no, you don't. I got a friend lives in the mountains. She's been off grid for 35 years. She uses human manure.

Speaker 1: 17:11

I was about to say, didn't they just poop in buckets and composting toilet.

Speaker 2: 17:15

She, you know, she uses things that are around her, and she's existed in a modern world for 35 years that way, and the things that bring her down are modern, like but like, let's talk about this unnamed person I never met her, but like, let's look at her for a second.

Speaker 1: 17:30

She, she is this. You're using her as a pinnacle for a moment. You know some, some random pinnacle, just to look at, right, some individual on a hill and it's like, wow, wait a second, let's pause and look. Let's like pay attention to it, let's attend to this idea. Is she able to save the world, this world, the world of air conditioning and pain?

Speaker 2: 17:57

No, no, and she did it and I asked her this question when I'm. She's 83, lives by herself off the grid, 30-old apple orchard. Climbs trees to this day, does her own pruning harvest, hauls water. We were up two weeks ago climbing the side of a mountain fixing the line that runs from her spring, which is, by the way, a black polyethylene pipe she has to buy in.

Speaker 2: 18:18

She's been off grid for 35 years because she didn't believe in the power companies. She didn't want to promote and support industries like that. And so she said I'm buying land and I'm pulling completely out of the system, and so she can't. She hasn't saved the world because she's been there for 35 years and the world has continued to progress. And I see, I see the grief that she has and and I've talked to her at length about the mental challenges of that it's like you pulled away for this, to save this, to make this difference, and the world went on without you. But you did protect that. She did save a world, her own world, her internal world. Now, where is the value right In a world that was like well, what have you done for me lately? And she struggles with human connection. She struggles with being different and connecting with people that are from a very different world. Her own family, her children, look at her lifestyle in a negative way these days, and so it's hard.

Speaker 1: 19:23

It's an interesting picture, if I can interrupt you, it's, I'm sorry. It's such an interesting picture to me because so much of us, you know, I'm pushing on this idea of saving the world because, you know, in Stank Time I've thought heavily about these things where I realized one day that to an epiphany the middle of the night, epiphany like we're going to get to in this conversation with you and in one that you had, but I had this middle of the night epiphany where I realized, I realized to myself long have I tried to save the world. But if it were to be saved, like is it really what I want to live in? Like? Let's pretend agriculture can save a climate disaster. Let's pretend that regenerative agriculture is the key and that key opens the door to solving the climate disaster.

Speaker 1: 20:06

We still have industrial capitalism, we still have colonialization. We still have this power, this dominator mindset. Right, we still have all of the systems that lock us into place in not being human. Right, you're saying that she struggles to be with humans. I don't know. I think she struggles to be with humanoids, like the monsters that we are today. Right, correct? If anything, these humanoids don't correspond to your humanness, right?

Speaker 1: 20:31

And so if we all were to use this separatist system, which I still want to unpack with you, how regeneration could be a separatist system to save this world so that it can continue in the way that it's currently going. All of these tangents right, the things that I've mentioned industrial capitalism, et cetera, colonialism especially, do we even want to Like? Could you imagine if we got a bunch of regenerative farmers together and pose this question to them yeah, the, the, the, the. The supreme depression that you live in, because trying to save the world is not fitting your pocketbook numbers right, the depression that you feel right, is that a world you want to save? I wonder what they would say. Like if, if they had their druthers, if they, if they could actually look into their heart and be honest with themselves.

Speaker 2: 21:27

It's? I mean, it's a great question and I'll answer it by saying what I kind of said about the ego, if they looked at it from within the business. I am, I enjoy farming and I think at times I am astute and I observe well and I have a good gut for the plants and maybe if I tweak and do and make changes, things will happen and promote what it is I'm trying to do. It will allow me to coax it along Some years. That's not true. Some years you do everything wrong and the crops are great. It was going to be a good cucumber year, no matter what I did. It did not matter. And the next year I did everything right and there's disease in there. They get wiped out and it was going to be a bad cucumber year. So sometimes you got to step back and realize like we're not that special in the mix. But if you're speaking from the ego state of the man-made aspects of agriculture or business or anything, I'm bad at those Human created these constructs I struggle with. I'm not a good bookkeeper, I'm not a good marketer, I'm not good at sales and all of those things and I feel like the things that are just me being in a field with a plant and being like I've watched this plant for so long that I have a feeling that right now this plant would like more water, and that relationship like if I could do anything right now, if I could be anything, I'm getting choked up. I don't know why, but I would like to just watch plants. That's weird, I know that makes me a strange person, but when I just go out and watch and I know it sounds woo-woo just watch and try to learn from plants. Learn about plants. Just which one makes you sick, which one helps you, which one heals you, which one feeds you, which one just nourishes the soul, is beautiful. Look at, like, if I could just watch plants, that's the world I want to save, the world where I watch it, to try to like extract something from it. That's not the world I want to save, and I think that's what a regenerative most of us would say is like we don't. Like I'd love to go live on the mountain with my friend and gather water and you know, forage, and, but she still goes to the grocery store sometimes. She still has a little recycling bin with some plastic pieces in it. Yeah, you know. And so we need each other so much that when the whole world is running one direction and you want to run the other, that's the question of humanity. Like, we're such social creatures that, like I guess I want to save the world.

Speaker 2: 24:12

That has a connection to you and to this gentleman and to everyone. Right, we're coming together for a comp concert here, like. So how do we balance that? Right, cause I want, I don't want all the trappings. I don't want the big screen on the wall over there, next to us here. Yeah, it keeps hitting my head. Yeah, when I try to have dinner. I don't want that. Yeah, but I want the moment that you and I sit down together to watch a movie and discuss and enjoy that moment. Right, I want that connection, but I don't want that tool and I don't know, I don't know. I feel like we could go and walk in the woods and look at the plant, which is what I really want to do go walk them. But everybody else is running in that direction and I want to be a part of that. I want community too, and so I need them.

Speaker 1: 24:58

It's an interesting thing, I think it's true, herbivores to some large degree are herding animals and maybe fish are schooling animals, right, like whatever. I think humans's true, herbivores to some large degree are herding animals and maybe fish are schooling animals, right, like whatever. I think humans being tribal animals, you know, I think it makes sense. I don't think anybody really contests us. Yeah, indigenous wisdom itself, like with the indigenous people, like that's true. It just seems undeniably true to me, and so, like it makes sense that at the end of the world here and I don't know what that means just at the end of the world, that, as we understand it, yeah, at the end of the world, um, that search for community and tribalism and connection and depth is so important. But simultaneous to that, the only way we know how, and sometimes the only way we can, is via this machine, this industrial engine. You know, like we met at a speech that I gave and I'm not saying you came here because of social media, but like there's a lot of people who came here because they saw it on social media, right, and so like that's a weird reality. It's a really weird reality and to me, I don't see this reality any different than a lot of the regenerative world, you know. So, for instance, in order to save the world, in order to heal the climate, we have to control its evolution, we have to control the inputs, we have to control the outputs, right, like cows are destroying the world and we have to control where they are. Like, what a weird statement. I mean there's a hundred pages in the book dedicated to this really uncomfortable statement. Right, where it's just like nature doesn't know how to do that, so we have to control its doing that to mimic its own innate wisdom that it wants to do and therefore it's okay. Like cows controlled by humans are okay. Cows not controlled by humans are the devil incarnate. You know what you see the ideology of of this, you know regen, I think regenerative movement is not too different than the struggling ideology, ideology that you're playing with, where you want the connection. But we only have the insuperior force, we only have the digital technology, right, because, like, how cool, there's three people in this room. Right, we got Ryan, we got you, we got me. How cool would it be if, like Ryan, had some like hour long story that he had memorized, you know, and me and you made some tea, and it was just like Ryan just spoke it, you know, and me and you made some tea and it was just like ryan just spoke it, you know, and it was just like you and I listened to it like holy fucking hell. I mean like god, the whole world would change right, and probably ryan could do it. He's sitting there smiling, he's like I got an hour right and it's just like wait, whoa, whoa. You know, it's just like what if we start asking some simpler questions, because there's a lot of questions running around how do we graze cattle better? How do we do these things better? How do we focus on soil health better? How do we bring better meats to the marketplace?

Speaker 1: 27:54

Nestle, general Mills, nestle and Bay are the three biggest companies out there in terms of this statement. By 2030, they have concluded. By 2030, the entirety of their supply chain will be from regenerative landscapes. Just like in your mind right now. Think about Nestle, put a product of Nestle in your head and then think of regenerative agriculture and think that they're going to unite. Do you think Nestle is stooping down to regeneration's level or do you think regeneration is ascending up to Nestle's level? Nestle's not stooping down. They're not saying the fricking box of cheese puffs or Debbie whatevers that are filled with processed nothingness. Right that that's going to come from? No, no, no, no, no. It's just that one tiny little tangential aspect of that production cycle is coming from a farm that paid to have its you know landscape proven to be regenerative, but none of the data is available to us.

Speaker 2: 28:50

Was it proven? How was it proven? How was it?

Speaker 1: 28:52

I don't know that it was because we do listen to this. We do eov, like I said earlier, hundreds of farms over the past couple of years, my wife and I and taissa porto and many other people that that we've worked with 80 to 87. I don't know the exact numbers. I always say 80 to 87% because while I'm good with numbers and I was a math major in college, I have no interest in actually knowing 80, let's call it 80% of the farms that we do EOV for. Do not pass 80%. Now listen, I'm not here to insult EOV. I actually think it's wonderful. I teach EOV courses. It's a fine first step for modern humanity to start to look and talk to plants. Okay, it's a fine first step. I think it's the best step that we've taken thus far. I don't think it's the end goal. I think it needs to improve as the human consciousness becomes awakened and improved itself. That said, it's pretty good, but it's like a presidential fitness award. I mean, I mean it. It's like could you run a mile under 12 minutes? Yes, okay. All that means is that you're alive and you're able to move a little bit. I mean, running a mile in 12 minutes or less is like walking fast, right, and I'm not trying to discredit that, but what I'm trying to do is it's not used to determine the Olympic team? Okay, but we view EOV as the determination of the Olympic team. Right, it's not.

Speaker 1: 30:09

Do you have plants growing? Yes, check, okay, it's not. Are these plants happy, like actually? Are the community that they live in happy, right? Do they have people to talk to? Right, no, no, no, no, it's just. Do you have plants, right? Or do you have feet that can walk relatively fast to turn a mile in under 12 minutes? At least that's what it was when I was in high school.

Speaker 1: 30:29

I don't know what it is today, but my point is 80% of the farms that we do it for aren't even able to run a 12 minute mile, and these are regenerative farms. And you say well, Daniel, you know what kind of farms you're doing, the ones that are regenerative that call me. We don't market this service. These are farms that are regenerative, that want to prove that they're regenerative. These are people that truly believe they're regenerating and, by the way, for most of them, I can give you a couple exceptions, but for most of them, they truly believe they are regenerating and they truly have a heart for regeneration. But everything that they have purchased, everything that they have listened to in conferences, everything that they have read in books tells them right, talking to a gentleman this evening, that after the speech he was telling me that he follows Joel Salatin's method which we don't even need to discuss, joel, but the point is that's his method, that he follows right.

Speaker 1: 31:22

And he was like yeah, we're, we're regenerating, are you? Because you're doing that thing? Right, like I can tell you how to have a happy marriage. It's when you go out, you get pizza, right, like that's the foundation of a happy marriage. When you go on a date once a month, once a year, whatever it is, once a week, hopefully, like that, that's what we're doing.

Speaker 2: 31:44

Yeah, one aspect One could be Could be Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I don't like pizza, but you never asked, right?

Speaker 1: 31:49

You see they're not. I'm going back to your wonderful moment where you got so emotional about these plants. It's like you are telling me, right, that these plants matter to you, but you've never talked to them and they're screaming stop change. Do something else, please. The idea of just placing cattle or sheep or goats, whatever it is, in a little electric net and then moving it tomorrow and then moving it the next day, that's not regenerative. It's regenerative if we actually have a relationship with it and they have a relationship with it the cows, goats or sheep, whatever it is and that the actual landscape has a relationship with itself and self-knowledge, with the cows, the goats or sheep and then us ourselves, like if it's a one living system. Using again Gary Taylor's words, I love it. If it is that, okay in time, yeah, but like what does it mean in time? Like what does it mean for health to return to a landscape?

Speaker 1: 32:46

Like you can't follow the six practices of soil health or regenerative agriculture and think undeniably that we're going to regenerate, you know, in the same sense, that you can't say that technology needs to exist so that we can have community. I mean, maybe we can use the six soil health principles to generate regenerating landscapes. Right, that's fine. I don't challenge that, Of course, just like you can use social media to generate relationship in this way. But you don't have to. But people have so purchased the story that in order to regenerate, you have to do these things. They've so purchased the story that in order to have community, you have to be on social media. You see, this is the hole that's being built here, these two parallel realities that are like converging on the same destructive, degenerative life that we call this life. Right Head on, you know. And then we look to Nestle and we're we're always almost competing with each other for whose thing is better.

Speaker 2: 33:49

And then it's hard to not have mission creep right, like I'm an organic grower, until everyone on my block starts saying they're regenerative. And then I start feeling like, well, now, my organic's not good enough. Well, I got to be regenerative too. So then I start saying, well, I'm kind of regenerative too. Regenerative too. So then I started saying, well, I'm kind of regenerative too. And I think what I was thinking when you were just talking about how General Mills or Nestle is going to do that is right now.

Speaker 2: 34:13

There's a lot of murkiness. You speak to it all the time on the podcast about what it is, what is regenerative, what is it to you, what is it to me, what is it to Ryan? And if there is no one set of standards and I know everybody's rushing to come up with who's going to have the right standard and different organizations can give you certifications, but I think we know that corporations profit when there is confusion. Right? If organic is a very strict set of rules, that's going to cost them probably more to produce that way. They're going to have to be verified and prove that they do what they say. For the most part, people will then immediately go oh, have you heard about the people that lie and sell it to grain. Well, people are always going to be bad people and lie in regenerative and organic in life in general. But for the most part, having a third party verify what you're doing gives me the end consumer when I walk in the grocery store and want a product for my daughter's health and I want to know what is and isn't there. It gives me one more layer of confidence and I feel like in regenerative right now. If they can push organic to the side and have people stop looking at that ball, then they don't have to continue to try to compete in an organic space. That's more expensive for them, probably All the while.

Speaker 2: 35:26

Organic the market is growing leaps and bounds every year and it seems like more people are paying attention to food. But now regenerative can help. I feel like it will help corporations get our eye off the ball. That maybe reduces how much money they can make and makes it way easier to manipulate and make money.

Speaker 2: 35:47

Because you might call your farm regenerative because you increased your soil organic matter a quarter of a percent last year and I might say that because we did some test plots and found that I have 10% more earthworms on my property than I did last year. Both of us could say we are regenerating our land, but we both could still then use Roundup Dicam, but we could use anything else, because there are no rules that say here's what regenerative is, but here's what it 100% is not. And that was a huge thing. That I learned is that regenerative does not mean that it is in any way linked to or similar to, organic or natural or low-till, no-till, low-spray. It does not mean any of that. You can be conventional, big ag, big chemical and be regenerative.

Speaker 2: 36:40

So what does that label mean?

Speaker 1: 36:42

Yeah, that's what I want to know. That's an amazing question. I guess I'm talking to a consumer right now. So if you're a person that buys food from farmers, like one question I'd always tell people, you know, when they ask me like, hey, what kind of question should I ask the farmer locally so that I know if it's, you know, good for my family or not? This food, and like, regenerative is interesting, right, but the number of farms that I know that raise regenerative pork or chicken, that supplement those pork or chicken herds, flock sounders, whatever they are, with, you know, non-organic, not non-gmo, conventionally grown grains, I mean, it's more than half right, but you go to their websites and it says regenerative pork, right, but it's just like, yeah, these are conventional hogs fed outside.

Speaker 2: 37:33

Moved through a paddock. However long they decide, yeah, whatever they determine the right stocking density Better.

Speaker 1: 37:40

Better, better, right, like in stack time. I write this. At the beginning of the book there's a letter, it's called A Letter from the Author and it begins Dear Regeneration, I was wrong, it was not you, it is me, right, Because I'm done with this. I love it, I'm done with this. Because regeneration is better, right, but everybody in this room understands that actual regeneration, right, the essence of this thing, right, it's not better, it's everything. What we have as regeneration is not regeneration.

Speaker 1: 38:16

I really don't believe that's true, not when the global understanding of VOV is that 80% of farms aren't, that 100% of farms are regenerative. You know, talking in the, the savory community. It's like how many farms do you guys have that aren't passing? Oh, none, none. I'm at 80 percent. How many farms are you not? None, I'm at 80 percent, right. It's like what? Where's the disconnect? Where are we disconnected? Yeah, I'm not calling you a liar, right. Maybe you're just not good at it. Let's hope that's the case. But the point is, if regeneration is happening, life is here, and that includes social life, right, between humans, between humans and their communities, between the humans, the communities and the plants, communities and the plants within the like. It's one living system. Again barring with carrie taylor. I I'm reading carrie's book because we're about to have her on the podcast, so this is what it is, but it's, it's brilliant. Yeah right, this one living system is regenerative what you're speaking on there this is not.

Speaker 2: 39:18

What you're speaking on is the question of what world do we want to live in and do we really live in? Because in that world these farms are customers of these institutes, these organizations.

Speaker 1: 39:32

Yeah, they're customers of industry period I was certified organic.

Speaker 2: 39:35

For many years I was considering not being certified anymore. I had a good connection to my customers, yada, yada. People have heard this whole spiel before I could talk to my customer directly. I didn't know if it was worth filing the paperwork and doing all the stuff every year and paying the money. I decided I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it. I called the certifier to just discuss what my options would look like.

Speaker 2: 39:54

10 or 12 macro, these large containers full thousands of pounds of winter squash that I had grown under organic certification. It was beautiful food that I was going to sell for the next few months to my community. And what they said to me was technically, if you don't write the check and file the paperwork this week, your certification will lapse. And at that moment that crop is not organic. Right, and I knew that was the case. But as I just talked them through it and I was like, yeah, but I grew it, it just that's that world that I don't want to live in, where, like, the essence of that crop was not at debate, right then it was literally the finances of it, was the legal determination of that crop that we were talking. It was a man-made construct that we were debating, not the essence of, was that tech organic? It's just. It was just heartbreaking.

Speaker 1: 41:00

That man-made construct exists, though, because human community doesn't exist, right, like, if I go to the grocery store to buy an organic apple, I'm never going to meet that farmer, right right. So the organic system exists because I don't have community with organic apple farmers, like actually organic, you know, natural, whatever, right yeah?

Speaker 2: 41:19

true, yeah, well, those communities don't exist at all. I mean, our communities are going online more and more. Our community, our our, our, our family systems are, are like close neighborhood communities are being more and more fractured. You know it's. I don't have, I don't have these answers. You know it's just there's, there's so many little pieces that need to be picked up and it's like which one has to go first, which one? If we're stacking blocks like which, how do we which one goes first, which one before, so the whole thing doesn't topple? It's, yeah, it's it.

Speaker 1: 42:02

yeah, it's, it's, it's. It's not easy, um, but like, okay. So like today, yesterday was the summer solstice, yes, and uh, I was going to bed last night and it was dark, I was up late, which I'm usually not, but uh, just have a wonderful community here that just keeps talking and talking and it's just unbelievable. But I thought about this last, I thought the longest day of the year, right, it is a huge solstice moment, you know, and astrologically and everything else that I can't really speak to, I don't have this knowledge. But, you know, people tell me that it matters Astrologically, we all know it matters in our bones, right, but there's language to this that I don't know. And this moment of, of, of pause, of of being born again, you know, of rebirth into you know, this is the moment, this is the pinnacle, this summer solstice, and it's so interesting to me that that all is related to the longest day that just drowns on for forever. You know, nine o'clock, it's still bright, 9.30 is still bright, right, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 43:11

I got this image of, like pause, right, the pause, the reality, the world that needs to be created, in my opinion, needs to be created from a pause, right, because even now, like we're trying to save the world and we're trying to regenerate. And maybe you're listening to this and you're like, god damn it, like I just became a regenerative farmer. You know, just like. But just if you paused, none of this conversation should be that interesting to you. Yeah, right, like if you actually start to ask yourself these deeper questions in this pause, like if you attend to yourself yourself. I've mentioned recently that attention is a moral act. I believe this is true, so let's bring our morals inside. If we attend to ourself and we pause, I don't think anybody listening to this is that upset to think that the world we want to save is not the world that we're currently saving. But, but we're so busy, right, we're so busy going to these conferences learning about six moral health principles.

Speaker 1: 44:10

you know, Like when I wrote Stack Time, I told you this before we started recording. I lost so many friends Like this stupid little green book sitting here between us has driven so many people away. You know, online there's so many negative reviews, people saying like this doesn't pay any sort of. You know, online there's so many negative reviews, people saying like this doesn't pay any sort of. You know this doesn't honor any sort of the lineage that the regenerative founders have set. You know, and it's just like I never say regeneration doesn't work.

Speaker 1: 44:37

Never once in the book, never once do I say that regeneration, as you understand it, does not scientifically have a positive result. For how you view that result, okay, this sort of grazing builds that sort of soil, organic matter. I don't deny it. Do you have to colonize the soil to do so? Yes, do you have to continually colonize the, the local human communities around you? Okay, to continue. Yes, you also need to do that. Yeah, we're colonizing earth, we're colonizing ourselves, we're colonizing those in our community that are already disadvantaged. You see my point. Yeah, if we look at soul, yeah, fine, regeneration scientifically yields this regeneration.

Speaker 1: 45:16

I'm using air quotes, I'm putting it in a box, this movement that you and I are talking about, not the thing, not the one living system, not the right relationship that all life and all being share, but, like the regeneration as a movement. We're so busy doing this that we've so engineered it to be so scientifically viable and maybe valuable that we've allowed ourselves to look in the singular narrative and forget about everybody else. Right, like you were saying, your relationship, like your farm, drove your relationship apart with somebody that you may or may not have cared about. But, like the point is, there was a relationship there, right, and you can speak to it if you want. But we can speak about, you know, indigenous and BIPOC communities, and I mean there's so much that your work touches, you know, and if you want to get into that, you can get into it. I'm laying the groundwork if you want to jump on it or not, but the point is we need to expand our consciousness, we need to expand our view.

Speaker 1: 46:10

First, to look at ourselves. Like, on this longest day of the year, can we just like pause, breathe and like, just like check in with ourselves. Right, Like, let's start there. What a wonderful moment. Like one time I was interviewing this lady on a on the podcast and anytime I asked her a question she would pause. She literally would be like this she would close her eyes, She'd be like and just there's a pause, you know. And then she would start answering and sometimes pause was like 30 seconds. I love it.

Speaker 1: 46:38

I was so uncomfortable, but I learned so much so intentional.

Speaker 2: 46:42

So intentional in a way that I'm not, I speak and I think through as I'm speaking. Yeah, and that's how I work things out, and maybe that leads to a good space but like in this space, I love it.

Speaker 1: 46:53

The life space, the space that source is. You know what if we paused?

Speaker 2: 46:58

Yeah, Pause, breathe breath. When you said pause, I thought breathe, breathe, and it's earlier you were talking about control Breathe breath. When you said pause, I thought breathe, breathe, and earlier you were talking about control. And when we try to control, think about anything you try to control that you don't have control over. What does it do? It drives fear, anxiety, stress, and we see that in so much of our lives. We try to control so many things that we can't control.

Speaker 2: 47:21

I farmed so long the way I wanted things to be, not the way they actually are. That's not a good relationship. I was trying to force the way I wanted the world to be into a living system. That was not that way and I could make it work that way sometimes, but sometimes I couldn't. And as I let go of control more and more and this is with relationship, this was so many things if you let go of whatever it is you're harboring and holding on to so tightly, I think there's so much growth and beauty in the letting go of and losing control, taking a breath, pausing, and I mean you're talking about regenerative.

Speaker 2: 47:59

You're speaking more about rewilding these days and you know the idea that, like regenerate, I don't. I understand what the six tenants say I don't. I don't really understand what regenerating is. If we're speaking in a linear evolutionary period, what are we going back to? We spoke, maybe before we were recording that, about our own evolution as people, as artists, as authors, as lovers, as artists, as authors, as lovers, as people in the world, as whatever. We are constantly evolving and changing. Our bodies start, they grow, then they deteriorate. Every bit of existence is that evolution? So to say we're regenerating means, in a way, it's almost like we're saying we're going to go back to a place in time that does not and cannot ever exist, can it? Regeneration to me means we're going back to this once upon a time way the world was. But the world's not that way and I'm not that way anymore, because we are days, weeks, years, minutes, seconds later. There's no generate to re-back to. You know, which makes no sense what I just said there. But you know what I'm saying, yeah.

Speaker 1: 49:10

Well, I think the question is can you control your way back to that world, like that's the question I've been playing with. I mean, that's Stag Time, that's literally the book. Can we control our way back to the world? We want, no, no, I. Back to the world. We want, no, no, I can't find a yes to that.

Speaker 2: 49:26

No, of course not, of course not. No, unless we want to get on rocket ships and go to Mars and try to. But I mean, our track record with taking care of planets isn't that great. And I'm like, what about the resources that could be devoted to? It's like we were talking about organic, regenerative the resources that could be devoted to fixing bridges, paying teachers more, feeding inner city children, helping people, do anything in the here and now. We just confuse so many systems in trying to make them better and prove that we can control things and we cannot control things.

Speaker 2: 50:13

And when I think what a lot of your work says is that we have to step back and realize we're a part of it. We're not in charge of this. Yeah, we're not in charge of it. And if we are, we are shitty managers of our world. If you look at any aspect of it the ecological, political, like whatever you want to look at we don't do well as managers, right, and we had people that have been here for thousands and thousands of years that lived in a different way and to me, a way that was way, had a lot more essence, was way, was more real, was more authentic as a part of this thing than this belief that you, you're the driver. You're it. We need to take a back seat. You're the shit, joe. No, come on, you are this is, and we also are not. We are also shits that, like I, I can't also lose sight of the fact that we put headphones on and we just spout and we expect that people would want to listen and you know, yeah, but I love, I love just the experience of the back and forth of the searching.

Speaker 2: 51:21

I love people that search and I feel like a lot of the world and forth of the searching. I love people that search and I feel like a lot of the world. We don't search because we're being fed things and we just take them, and I think we need to search more. We need to search ourselves, we need to search our world. We need to explore what existence is in a lot deeper way than we do. It can't just be flashy cars and big screens and social media followers. If it is, I don't want that. I don't want that for my children. I don't want that.

Speaker 1: 51:57

Yeah, it's a big reason. We changed a lot of the nature of this podcast Not that we put too much time into it. Like this is the most underfunded, not funded, under edited podcast I know of and we thought about canceling it. We really did For about two months.

Speaker 1: 52:16

Morgan and I really considered just not doing this anymore and to really lean into this pause. You know, like what you know, real silence. And then I was thinking about this one morning and I don't know if we were right or wrong about it, but I was thinking about it. I thought to myself, what if I turn this into long form conversations like this one that are real, that are honest, that are mostly in person, where we get to sit around, like I mentioned earlier, and tell stories for a long period of time and just listen and build a community that way? Like what if, talking in this closed community that hopefully a bird or a fly on the wall bird outside of the window fly on the wall listening, you know, podcast listener can benefit from? But what if we paused by generating community, you know, and then see what's born out of that Cause. Like I've learned a lot so far and I'm not. I got a lot. A couple of questions left, so you know. If you need to take a pee break, just let me know.

Speaker 2: 53:16

I'm feeling good, you're feeling good, I'm feeling good, I'm enjoying it. Thanks, thanks for taking the time. I love these conversations. I don't get to have enough of them and I feel like, in a way, agriculture and farming is. I want to just connect to people. I want to feed people, but it doesn't have to be a zucchini. I want nourishment, and it comes in so many different ways and we need each other, many different ways, and we need each other, and the older I get, the more that I just I realized that it is. It's really true that in 20 years, this conversation is going to matter so much more than, like how well I did at the farmer's market today.

Speaker 1: 53:57

Yeah, or those compost, you can right, right, you know, like what the right the hell? I love this phrase in the book. It says to rebel. We pause, you know, and so, to some degree, it was going to be the podcast's new name Like to really rebel against this machine. I really think we just need to pause, breathe for a second, and these conversations at least force me to pause, right, because, like, we have no agenda, but we get to just pause and soak up your essence, my essence, that we're gifting to each other, and maybe we'll arrive somewhere, maybe we won't, but that's the point, yeah, you know, so, that's, but I want to dive.

Speaker 1: 54:35

So when we were first introduced just minutes ago, um, our mutual friend ashton, he, he gave me a story about a conference that, uh, I'm gonna'm going to let you tell the story. You can tell it as you like, painting, however you want to paint yourself, and you can give as many details or as little details as I want, because I know it's a little politically charged, if you will, but it's a story that convinced me in that moment, immediately, 14 seconds in that. I have to know you that, whoever this is right, this bacteria and fungi that kept its clay and just started walking, called Joe. Like I have to meet this guy and I want to talk to him, which is why we're sitting here. Go ahead, just. I'm setting the playing field for you. I'm setting whatever. Just go, start running and we'll go from there. What's this story and why am I Well?

Speaker 2: 55:22

I got myself in a little bit of trouble with my employer because I'm a farm consultant. One of our main focuses is just helping growers in the Southeast, in the area, no matter who you are, what you are, but we have a focus on sustainable and organic. Regenerative now is a word that we're using, of course, a lot. We want to work a lot with bipod growers, female growers, anybody that's socially disadvantaged, historically underserved, so to help people get a leg up in agriculture that maybe historically haven't. So that's kind of the frame of reference. As I said, I've been an organic grower for 15 years. That's all I've ever done. I've never farmed or grown conventionally. I've been an organic grower for 15 years. That's all I've ever done. I've never farmed or grown conventionally. I've been an organic vegetable grower my whole career, and so that's close to my heart.

Speaker 2: 56:10

And the conference. There were a couple hedge fund managers, bankers, financial people that were starting to move into the regenerative space. They were investing large sums of money, they were touting large acreages that they were taking over managing for these huge corporations like you're talking about the General Mills, the Nestles, the whatever and they were just painting a picture of regenerative and agriculture in general that I didn't believe in. It's almost like we're talking about. They were painting a picture of a world that I don't agree with and don't think is the world we live in, and I felt like being doing what I do every day. I needed to at least just speak up and try to set the record a little bit straight for people in the room that maybe didn't have the full context, and so I just kind of you know of raised my hand and just simply said I don't think the way that you're presenting this is fair and respects the past. And it was kind of what people said to you about the pioneers of regenerative and I just said there's a long history, decades long, of organics and to me regenerative it brings a lot of the same bells that organic does.

Speaker 2: 57:25

And at that conference it's the first time that I heard fully conventional large row crop farmers talk about the ways that they were regenerative.

Speaker 2: 57:33

And a light bulb just went off and I realized that there was going to be this push and pull in the industry of really what regenerative was. And maybe naively, until that point I thought regenerative was very, very closely aligned to the organic movement, and since then I've realized that it's just not and it just depends. And so I just kind of raised my hand and said, hey, you're kind of putting down a lot of what I feel like is foundational information that's been done in organics for many years and pushing that aside and saying that it's fake science and not to believe it. But hey, look at this shiny new thing called a regenerative and trust this hedge fund manager to save you. And I just said that I didn't think that that was true and I took some heat for it. I thought that I was passionate in the moment, but I thought that I was respectful, and so that has kind of just taken me down this road of really trying to understand what regenerative organic are.

Speaker 2: 58:32

And then I think what I said to you after that was that the other night, um, and I don't know if that's where you want to go is to this, this like midnight epiphany, you know where, um, the middle of the night, where you're worrying about your child and the future and life and trying to just figure out how we are, where we are and where should we be and why are we, and all of those questions. Our greatest gift as humans on this planet, in this moment and of all time, I think, is our compassion, is our sympathy, and I just started playing with the idea of we're not the smartest, we're not the fastest right Like a cheetah is going to get us, we're not the toughest If we don't have our weapons and the things that our big brains have created to fight, we're not going to be able to fend for ourselves in the wild. And so we, as a society and as people, I think we've decided that what sets us apart is that ability to be smart enough to control, by force if necessary, by any means necessary, and I think that that's a flaw. We do have that ability, we see it every day. But I think our greatest gift and what I'm trying to just really lean into more is our greatest gift is our sympathy, our empathy, our compassion. I can kill, I can spray, I can be hateful, I can hurt, I can do those things, but I can also choose not to. And the predators apex predators a shark doesn't, in that moment, have the wherewithal to decide, the moral compass to say do I kill this tuna or not? Right, we do. We're one of a few species.

Speaker 2: 1:00:22

I think that we know, think that way, feel that way, make these connections, these family connections, this level of communication, and we're finding out more and more all the time that species do this.

Speaker 2: 1:00:33

And so hearing your talk today, the reason I wanted to come over and just chat, I wanted to put that on you and I was hoping you would go and get someone way more qualified and interesting to talk about it on an episode in the future.

Speaker 2: 1:00:44

And get someone way more qualified and interesting to talk about it on an episode in the future, just like if we are going to change the game and the narrative and we are going to try to save a world that we do want to live in. How does sympathy and compassion drive us? Because that's the question to me You've got to be sympathetic to say I don't want to spray this chemical because I believed it could hurt this other species and I value that species and I see myself on a level playing field as them, and so that to me that sort of change in people's hearts and I think we all have it there, but we just let the machine blind us and drive us Right. Machine blind us and drive us Right. And so how do we spur people to feel it in their heart, the sympathy, the love, the compassion for all of it around us, and try to create systems that help that?

Speaker 1: 1:01:37

It's interesting and I've had one and a half hours to think about this, but it's potent. Yeah, it's potent, it feels real what you're saying. But the interesting thing to me is sympathy could be so misguided and so malformed. Okay, and what I mean by that is like it's. It's so easy to mask sympathy, right, like I'm thinking about my children right now, like when I am sympathetic to their pains, whatever that is, or maybe I'm sympathetic to their joys, whatever that is, but when I show them sympathy, compassion, you know, I want to believe and I think I can say that I do my best to believe that the majority of the time I'm able to act selflessly selflessly, to be clear, to act selflessly, selflessly, to be clear, selflessly that I mourn for their loss when they lose, but they're my children. When I look at a plant and something bad happens to it and maybe that was bad at my hands I want to believe that I'm sympathetic. But am I sympathetic because that plant now is not photosynthesizing, sequestering carbon, whatever? The cows can't eat it. Or am I sympathetic because the life, the thingness, the essence, the source of that plant is now denuded and that matters? I had a professor in college who walked into the class big hungarian man, I'll never forget him, dr peter schramm, huge hungarian man from hungary I mean, he was hungarian but he was from hungary too and uh, emotional, emotional, like I'll never forget. There was one, one, one, one, one student in the class female freshmen who uh got uh drunk at a party, you know, as freshmen do, but like really drunk at a party, you know again, as freshmen do and uh ended up, you know, getting in a car, and the car was taken from her by a friend, thank God, and she ended up down the campus, like maybe even in the city, just lost. And then the police found her and brought her in because she was just as lost. 3 am. Whatever, my point is forget the exactness of the story. And the next morning in class she was there, she'd been up all night and her parents had come to whatever, go to the jail. It was drama and I'll never forget. I'll never forget.

Speaker 1: 1:04:14

This is a side story of the story I'm trying to tell, but like I'll never forget this huge hungarian man, he was crying tears, I mean like real ones, and all of them were flowing, and he pounded on the table that morning and he said why didn't you call me. That's the kind of guy this guy was. He was like at 3 am and he died the next year. I mean, he was old. We all went to his funeral.

Speaker 1: 1:04:36

It was an amazing, amazing moment, but like as an 80 some year old professor in a college town, he was like why didn't you call me Could have helped you. Like that's what I'm here for. I'm not here to teach you political philosophy, right, I'm here for you. And he was bawling and he slammed his hand on the table. I'll never forget it. Well, anyways, in the same style, he walked into class one day with a potato in his hand. I don't know why. Maybe he planned for this, maybe he didn't. He was that type that I don't even think he did. Sorry, I have to stop the story. I'll tell you another story.

Speaker 2: 1:05:12

A month before he died.

Speaker 1: 1:05:14

I was writing my senior thesis, kind of like a dissertation, but a mini version Ended up being the first book I wrote. Actually, I mean, it's the biggest book thus far that I've wrote too, so it was a big project. But he called me to talk to me about it. I came to his, you know, just off campus. But I came to his house. We were sitting in a chair, just like this small little house. There were books everywhere, I mean like legitimately everywhere, like there's no walls, they were just books. And we were talking and he gave me a cigar and I never smoked a cigar in my life and it kept going out and he was getting really angry at me because also was there fully, you know, showed you his anger that you had. He had to keep lighting the cigar. I'll never forget it. And he looked out the window. It was autumn and I died a month later.

Speaker 1: 1:06:01

Looked out the window, just like I'm looking out now like this, and I was right there and he was right here looking out and he was looking at this tree and it was in autumn in Northeast Ohio, right, so it's been turning, the colors are wonderful. And he was looking at this tree and it was in autumn in Northeast Ohio, right, so it's been turning, the colors are wonderful. And he says do you know who Mary Oliver is? I was like, no, I don't know who Mary Oliver is. And he's like, oh, she's a wonderful poet, let me read you something. And he just reaches over to a book, like he barely even looks and, by the way, there's books everywhere, okay, and I wish I can quote it to you now. But it says and the in the, in the, in the grains, and the glass stopped for a pure white moment while gravity sprinkled upwards, yes, like rain rising. Okay, so that lived in me. I did not know, I knew that, but that's wonderful. And he looked out and he said yes, like rain rising. And it was this pause moment. I'm never going to forget this. And then he's like okay, see you in class tomorrow. It's just over over, you know. And he didn't even like look from the window, he just focused on this tree, this death moment, right, and the sand and the glass stopped for a pure white moment while gravity's been poured upwards like rain rising. I mean, he was dying and he knew it. And he gave me this pause and we talked about some things that I'll never forget talking about.

Speaker 1: 1:07:17

Like that was this guy where he walks in with a fricking potato in his hand right back to this story and he goes who here knows what a potato tastes like? You know, we're all like college, you know freshmen? Well, I was not. I was a senior, but everybody else in the class were college freshmen. I transferred and this was a mandatory class I had to graduate with.

Speaker 1: 1:07:37

But he goes, you know who knows what a potato tastes like? And everybody's looking at each other like what the hell is a potato? You know whatever. And he's like I'm not leaving until somebody tells me what does a potato taste like? You know potato tastes like you know. And one person you know, stupid little college freshman, is like you know, fine, you know, I'll interact with the class. They were like you know saltiness or whatever. And somebody is like uh, oil, you know, or like savory or like crispy, like they're throwing out ideas on what a potato tastes like.

Speaker 1: 1:08:04

He starts to cry again. I mean, this guy was an emotional. I don't know he was very emotional, but he starts to cry again. Guy was an emotional, I don't know he was very emotional, but he starts to cry again and he's like you guys have never tasted potato. And everybody's like, yeah, we have.

Speaker 1: 1:08:16

Like we all went to the college, you know breakfast thingy in the morning, the cafeteria, and we all had potatoes, hash browns, whatever they were. We've never actually had potato. And he just sat there crying, holding the potato in his hand and I swear to God, he was sitting there talking to it, apologizing, like, oh my God, none of these kids know you for what you are, not what you deliver in a cooked fashion. Please, god, eat a potato cooked, cook it well and add some marvelous other juices to the thing, but have you ever tasted potato? How are we talking about life if you've never even acknowledged the thingness that is this? You're only acknowledging that which serves you, that this thingness contributes to. That's the only thing you're acknowledging.

Speaker 1: 1:09:06

Every day I interact with this gentleman. He changed my life, but like that was a change in my life, you know, and I wonder, so much of regeneration and this is so like. You know whatever. This is so simple and stupid, but like so much of regeneration is like home fries. You know potato chips. You know it's hash browns. You know it's sweet baked potato in the oven with some sour cream and chives right, like that's regeneration, but like, where's potato? Like what is potato? It's a revolutionary moment to pause and check and ask ourself are we doing this because it's French fries or are we doing this because potatoes matter? And I know potato, like I can talk to it, not expecting it to return in English, right, but expecting it to return the communication in something so much deeper than the English language that the English language would insult the damn thing, right, yeah, english language, that the English language would insult the damn thing.

Speaker 2: 1:10:12

Right yeah, the difference between I mean that's, that's a wild story.

Speaker 1: 1:10:17

There was like three of them in there. That was totally unnecessary.

Speaker 2: 1:10:20

It's also why they don't let you in the boardroom, right? This is why the guys like take your book off the table, escort the guy out.

Speaker 1: 1:10:28

Because it's hard?

Speaker 2: 1:10:29

I'm not. It's hard for the a lot of people that are just drinking the Kool-Aid for lack of a better term to stop and like to sit and have a conversation about that story. They just it's too much for them to connect with. And and like, in that moment, I was trying to come along on the journey with you and finally I'm like, oh yeah, I was trying to come along on the journey with you. And finally I'm like, oh yeah, I gotcha. Is he saying what we've talked about this whole time? The world we have and the world like, what world is it? Is it the baked potato or is it the potato? Isn't that what we're saying, right?

Speaker 2: 1:11:07

now we live in a baked potato world. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:11:09

Right, yeah, it's the title of the episode.

Speaker 2: 1:11:11

Yeah, that's a great title. Yeah, yeah, I yeah. So much is that potato. It's potato-ness which sounds so ridiculous to say, but like, does that potato grow to become a French fry for us in the drive-through?

Speaker 1: 1:11:28

Maybe Is that the essence of what that potato is, though. No See, that's the answer no, no. Essence, no, no. Final outcome, in its gift form, maybe, is there something wrong with that?

Speaker 2: 1:11:39

Maybe not Right, but exploitation and destruction At least. Let's keep the seed oils at bay, though, right.

Speaker 1: 1:11:47

There's better ways in the conversation.

Speaker 2: 1:11:49

Not at all. It's, ultimately, we want to. What's the word we want to distort and I think that's what you see us do is we're never happy with what the thing does. We're happy with what it can become. It's not tree, it's lumber, it's board. It's not, you know, it's not old growth, it's board feet. And when we that is that's the essence of our conversation here to me is that's what we're trying to get through is is being compassionate and looking at the world to see it as it is. I always tried to have it be the way I wanted it to be, but I have to stop and step back and take the world and take the people that I meet and take every ask. Take them for what they are instead of what you need them to be. And we're constantly trying to extract and change and alter, because we believe that we know what a tree should be. A tree should not be a tree, it should be a house, what a tree should be. A tree should not be a tree, it should be a house, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:12:52

And Maybe there's nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 2: 1:12:55

There's nothing wrong with that sometimes, but on a mass scale across seven, eight billion of us. Without respect In a market, in an economy with no, yes, yes, and so we need respect. We need yeah, we need respect, we need compassion, we need sympathy, we need these things that in a boardroom are weakness. We need feminine energy if.

Speaker 1: 1:13:16

I can say that, but no, say it.

Speaker 2: 1:13:17

We need more motherly, feminine energy yeah, we need I have divorce relationships, upheaval and romantic lives have really helped me to look at myself and I've seen friends in similar situations double down on she did, she doesn't understand me, it's her fault. She never listened, she's this, she's this, she's this. And divorce was maybe the greatest thing that happened to me, because I for some reason took the approach of being like who was I and who did I want to be? What world?

Speaker 1: 1:13:59

did I live in.

Speaker 2: 1:14:01

What world existed, what world do I really want to exist? And I have really tried to say to myself what did I bring to the table? What have I done through this? And I've started to see that men, male energy, that aggressive, that nature that kick the door down when you could just look over and realize the window was open all along, right, Like that's the way I've always lived and it just happened that way. It's just a lot of it was my own, just being an idiot, and a lot of it was just the way the world goes.

Speaker 2: 1:14:34

But I have now realized we need more pausing and breaths. We need more feminine, mothering, supportive energy in so many of these situations. We don't need paternalistic men in boardrooms and suits driving the bus. We need moms and daughters and sisters. And we need men, but we need men that aren't men because they have to be men. We need men that are just creatures along, you know and that that's a lot of it, Cause you can't go have a potato conversation in a boardroom full of shirts and ties because they're like ah, get out of here, Profit loss blah, blah blah.

Speaker 1: 1:15:14

And they're like do you know how much money we make with French fries? Right, right.

Speaker 2: 1:15:17

Like we need and we need childish. We need to revert, we need to be childish again and not meaning, like not thinking through things clearly, but we need to play. We Not thinking through things clearly, but we need to play. We need to watch plants. That's what I mean when I go to the mountains and I help my friend work on her spring and we flip over rocks and we watch salamanders and we find mushrooms growing on logs and we ponder what they are and we don't know. We just like try to experience. It's like being a child playing in the woods.

Speaker 1: 1:15:46

Yeah, there's this anthropologist that I read about in the book, whose name leaves me, fortunately, um, but he wants to rename the homo species uh, homo sapiens, sapiens, us to homo lupins, which is the latin word for play. Like, if we start to truly understand ourselves as like, sympathetic playing animals, like we play, yeah, right, like a child plays, yeah, you know. And he says that history, you know who knows if he's right, I want to believe that he's right, my bones know he's right, but my mind is struggling. Um, he says the entirety of human evolution in human history, it was not a struggle for survival, but a snuggle for survival. And he, he has all of this evidence. He wrote a whole book on it. It's a marvelous book. But, like you know, that's true, definitely, you know that's true. Homo lupins yes, absolutely, we play, the species that plays.

Speaker 1: 1:16:43

Now, don't get me wrong. That's not to say that other species don't play, because of course that's the false statement, but rather that course that's that's the false statement, but rather that what if we started to realize that we are a species that doesn't use tools to colonize? Okay, what if we're a species that doesn't use tools to control to a particular result? Yeah, what if we play. You know, like what if we planned, implemented and replanned? And this was a playing process. What? What if it was fluid? What if the world that we could live in was a fluid, nonlinear, entirely singular, though right, singular as this whole, it's just one world system where curiosity and compassion co-created into an actual world of actual things. Yeah, not this, this all around us.

Speaker 2: 1:17:35

That's I would. I would say that's why you see the anger, the anxiety we want to play. Most of the time when I'm frustrated and struggling in the week is like all the things that are forcing me to do the timeline, the deadline, the work thing, the school thing for my daughter, all the places we have to be, all the things and what I really want to do. I told you I want to go play in the woods and watch plants, and all these other things in life are keeping me from that and they make it makes me angry, it makes me frustrated, it makes me sad, it makes me all of these things.

Speaker 2: 1:18:08

And the other word that we have not used once in this podcast is vulnerability. Right, we need to be vulnerable. We are not apex predators. We cannot hold our own. Right, we need to realize where we are on the food chain and not brute force control but literally be like, okay, I better watch myself. Like, just, we need to bring it down a couple of notches that's what I think A couple of you a couple, as in all of them.

Speaker 2: 1:18:38

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:18:39

Yeah, no, I agree with you. Yeah, I agree with you. Well, I can talk to you forever. Oh yeah, this is great. That's the end of the episode. Who are you Give us like a 15 second, 30 second, I mean? Who?

Speaker 2: 1:18:48

who are you Give?

Speaker 1: 1:18:49

us like a 15 second 30 second, oh man. Who the hell are you? Wow, or maybe.

Speaker 2: 1:18:55

I should ask where are you?

Speaker 2: 1:18:58

We're thinking on the right lines. I was about to say Joe Hollis, who I never met, but so many people say his name to me. I'm like have you ever been to his place? Have you ever been? So I am a father. I've got the opportunity to be in a relationship with a little young lady who's almost eight years old. That every day teaches me more about what true relationships and true connection is, which is the most valuable experience of my life. So I'm really thankful for that.

Speaker 2: 1:19:34

I'm cynical, I'm angry. I'm an angry cynical person a lot, but in this most hopeful way. I'm super pessimistic in the moment, but optimistic overall for the long term. Silly, I'm, playful, I like to be passionate. I'm excited. I'm I'm very easily excitable.

Speaker 2: 1:19:55

People can probably tell by the way I talk.

Speaker 2: 1:19:56

I get kind of um jittery sometimes with just the energy that's in me. Um, I've lived in the Piedmont, in this area of North Carolina, for a really long time, um, growing things for the last 15 years and trying to find my way in love and in community and friendships and trying to do work that I connect to and with people that I connect to and enjoy things along the way and not always be down and thinking so big and sometimes just being like everything we said is so deep. But tonight, fuck it, I'm going to watch Netflix for three hours and eat popcorn, because sometimes we have to just let go and be where we are. You know what I mean? Like we can only do so much and I think that if we have these conversations, that that says a lot just to have them and to have them on multiple people and try to have people keep thinking. And now you're going to go to somebody else and say something that you thought about and I'm going to tell so many people about this conversation I had that was interesting and they're going to think about it, and so I'm a person that loves that. That push that take.

Speaker 2: 1:21:08

I'm a musician, I'm a singer, I do stand-up comedy. Sometimes, when I'm really feeling like the, the creative juices are flowing, god, I'm just naming that, I'm just pushed that I'm just naming things that feel valuable to me.

Speaker 2: 1:21:24

Um what? Was your band's name oh god, how do we find you?

Speaker 1: 1:21:28

I don't want to. I don't want to I don't want to.

Speaker 2: 1:21:30

I don't want to. I'm going to tell you after the fact yeah, I don't want to. We talked about it. It's one of those things where anything you put down on tape and then look at 15 years later I'm not proud of it. It was drunken, it was misogynistic, it was a creative outlet but honestly and musically some of it was good and some messages in there were really heartfelt.

Speaker 2: 1:21:49

But in a way it was almost like musical theater in that I was writing towards a character that the band and I told ourselves we were Bearded, long haired, drunken, womanizing party rock stars, Right. And it feels so far from everything we just had a conversation about and the evolution of my life. Now I'm still writing a lot of music and writing comedy and things like that that I feel like sometimes have messages and sometimes it's just this is fun for me in this moment and a creative outlet, and so, yeah, I'm a lot of things, we are all a lot of things. We need to embrace more of all the things that we are and love how complex we are in this world is and just really embrace, trying to be a part of it, protect as much as we can. So thanks so much for the talk, man.

Speaker 2: 1:22:43

I don't know if that told you what you wanted about who I was, but no no. That's wonderful.

Speaker 1: 1:22:49

Thanks for being you here.

Speaker 2: 1:22:50

Yeah, it was great. You too, man, I appreciate the podcast. I got turned on to it like a year ago and have listened to a bunch of them and there's times, honestly, where I'm like screaming at it. I'm like what are you talking about? And I don't agree with everything you're saying. I'm like what? But then overall, the through line I completely love and support and I'm happy with everything you're doing.

Speaker 1: 1:23:12

Do you have anything present that you disagree with? Not in this conversation, but I'd love to hear. I don't know, maybe if it's not present, it's beautifully fine.

Speaker 2: 1:23:22

Yeah, that's so wonderful for me to hear, not in the moment. No, I don't know, cool, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 1:23:30

I'll think about it and uh yeah, you let me know it's it's just so interesting in the digital world we see all comments as either like or dislike. Yeah, you know, because that's the framework, right, right, not that you really can dislike, and many platforms. But like, either you like it or you dislike it. Yeah, but like, either you like it or you dislike it. Yeah, and uh, you know, I always tell you know, people like leave a review even if it's bad. I mean, make sure it's a good review, right, like, don't whine about yourself, you know, like one, I'll never forget the first book I ever put out there. Somebody reviewed it and said give it a one star and said in this book that's a bad review. Yeah, god, okay, that's. I don't know what to do with this.

Speaker 2: 1:24:15

And that's also going into it. And I feel that way sometimes you go to workshops, you talk a million. You sit through a workshop and you walk out of there and you're like that speaker didn't really know what they were talking about. Sometimes it's like but they could help somebody, right, it's the journey, it's fine. Yeah, it's the journey, it's the connection.

Speaker 1: 1:24:35

I do love hearing the negative comments when they're constructive and their place inside the community, like when there's a face to it, you know. So that's wonderful. Well, we'll tag out, I appreciate you, Joe.

Speaker 2: 1:24:42

Thanks so much, man.

Speaker 1: 1:25:12

This. Well, we made it. Thanks for listening to this episode. If you've enjoyed the content or the conversation and you want to join the content and conversation, I beg you free. It doesn't cost you anything at all. It's the Wildland Chronicles on Substack. It's a link in the bio. You know what to do. Click it, join it and all of these episodes are posted there, with some further discussion topics and a way for us to discuss and comment and critique and further these thoughts together, which is, I have to be honest with you, the only reason we do this. I have no interest in talking at people, with people. So join us. We'll see you there, thank you.