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- [00:01]
A
What's up DAM Givers? Welcome to the let's Give a Damn podcast. A show where I get to have conversations with incredible people who aim to leave the planet much better than they found it. And then I get to share those conversations and guests and stories with you. I'm your host, Nick lapara, and I'm so delighted you're here. This episode is brought to you by fans and friends of the podcast. AKA you. Well, some of you anyway. In case you didn't know, let's Give a Damn is on Patreon. For just a few dollars a month you can help us make the podcast week after week after week creating and producing a podcast. Especially as a self employed entrepreneur one man show essentially. It's not easy and it's not cheap. So if you learned from the show, if you love the show, consider joining our Patreon. Visit patreon.com LetsGivaDam to learn more. Or you can just Google Patreon and let's Give a Damn and our page will pop right up. Hit me up@helloetsgivedam.com if you have any questions at all. Another way you can support the show is by purchasing some of our merch. The most popular item, and the one I get stopped every single day on the street about, is our trucker hat. If you follow me on socials, I'm wearing it in basically every post that I'm in. And if you're watching on YouTube, I'm wearing it right now. When you buy a hat or a hoodie or a tee, remember that all items in our store have shipping and tax already included in the price. Visit let'sgivadam.com store to support us today. Earlier in the intro, I described my guests as people who want to leave the planet much better than they found it. And that is especially true of my guest today, who has spent decades caring for our planet in beautiful and unique ways. My guest today this week is Ed Begley Jr. A legendary actor that has starred in TV shows like Arrested Development and Modern Family and Curb youb Enthusiasm and Better Call Saul and in movies like Batman Forever, Pineapple Express, and in 2023's Strange Darling, starring Ed, Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Golner. Listen, Ed's been in show business for several decades and he has, wait for it, 600 IMDb credits. But I didn't have Ed on the show to talk about show business. That's a conversation for another day. What I love about Ed, and have for years now, is that he takes such great care of our planet. He takes talks the talk and walks the walk almost more than anyone I know, to the extent that he has ridden his bike and taken the subway to the Oscars not once, but more than once. That's just one example of many that we'll touch on in this conversation. Not only am I deeply inspired by Ed, but he is an absolutely delightful human to talk to. I I only had half an hour with him this time around, but I could have spent hours with him and this is the last thing I'll say. Sometimes we assume Giving a Damn is a young folks game, right? We have more energy and more ideas and this and that. But Ed is still going strong and giving a damn at 75 and that's proof that you can't outgrow giving a damn. Giving a damn is for everyone. I want to mention two things here that we're going to talk about in this conversation to make sure you don't forget to check them out First. Ed's line of eco friendly cleaning products are available at Begley's Best.com or you can type Begley's Best on Amazon.com or Walmart.com and you can get them there. And that's all I'll say here about those products because you'll hear more in a few minutes. I just wanted to make sure that you got that right away. And make sure you pick up Ed's memoir To the Temple of Tranquility and Step on It, which was released in 2023. It's fantastic, it's funny, it's a must read. You can get it at your local bookstore or order it on bookshop.org or as a last resort you can always get it Amazon.com before we begin friends, a quick reminder as always that you can email me anytime and for any reason at hello, let's Give a Damn dot com. You can ask questions, recommend future guests, Tell me how much you love or hate the show. Anything goes. I just love hearing from you. And don't forget, if you prefer to watch your episodes instead of listening to them, we're on YouTube as well. And now let's get right into my conversation with my new friend and climate crisis fighting hero, Ed Begley Jr. And Begley Jr. Welcome to the let's Give a Damn podcast.
- [05:04]
B
Thank you Nick for having me. It's a joy to be here, a.
- [05:07]
A
Joy to be with you as well. You live in LA and there are some massive atrocities happening there right now. I hope and assume that you and yours are okay from the fires, but how's it been last few weeks.
- [05:21]
B
Yeah. We live in the flats of the San Fernando Valley in an area called Studio City. So we're not up in the hills. The hills, there's more danger. You know, you're not 100% protected anywhere. But I have a little edge. First of all, before I talk about any edge, I feel great sorrow and grief and support for all my many friends and people I don't know that have lost their homes. That's nothing worse. I can't imagine dealing with that. But I, this is something we feared might happen with climate change and now it's here and there's no joy in being right about it. But I, you know, my house, I, you know, I made it out of steel, so I thought that was a good way to go. And it certainly has been, you know, a lot, I feel a lot safer. It's hard for a steel house to catch fire.
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A
Right.
- [06:14]
B
And I have a 10,000 gallon rainwater tank underground that I could use that for, you know, emergency water and what have you. And I have a fire suppression system in every room and in this semi arid grassland that we live in called, you know, la. I think you have to think about making homes if you're going to rebuild. And I hope people do rebuild and they need to be supported in this, I think. But I think we should build out of less combustible materials than sticks. I think we should build more homes out of light gauge steel. I think that's a good choice. And there are probably other choices, but that's one of them that you feel a little bit safer about burning down. Still steel buildings can catch fire. We've seen it with the World Trade center. You fly a plane into it, that's going to burn too. There's stuff inside that's combustible. I know that, but you got a much better shot building out of light gauge steel and having sprinklers in every room as I do. Older houses, that's a different story. These are houses built long ago. You can't just, I'm not expecting people to take them down and put up a steel house, but people who are rebuilding, I would certainly consider that if I were rebuilding in some of these fire zones, Malibu and Pacific Palisades, what have you. That's something I would give a fair a hearing too.
- [07:29]
A
Well, yeah, it's super tragic what has happened there. I've had several friends that have lost everything. I had one friend who left her home and 12 minutes later it was inflamed. So she got out just in Time. And I thank God that she is okay. But. But yeah, 12 minutes difference and it could have been even more tragic. I hope. You know, we're going to, we're going to spend a chunk of our time talking about your environment, climate crisis work that you've been involved in for decades. I hope they consult you, Ed, in these coming years as they figure out how to rebuild in a way that would be not just more environmentally sustainable, but also could maybe keep these things from happening in the future. Super tragic. And my heart goes out to everyone living in and around LA that has been affected by this. But I'm glad you and yours are okay. I really, really am. We've got like 30 minutes today and I want to make the most of our time for the sake of our time and because I mostly want to talk about your work in the climate space and about the eco friendly products you've created. We aren't going to talk a lot about Ed. We're not going to talk a lot about your body of entertainment work. Folks can find that all over Al Gore's Internet and all over the streaming platforms that we have. But I do want to spend one minute on it. You have hundreds of credits in IMDb. You've been in everything over the past, you know, 30, 40 years and that's amazing and I hope you're really proud of all you've accomplished. But I would be remiss just because we're going to spend most of our time talking about the climate crisis and what you've been doing over the last decades about that. I would be remiss though if I didn't mention one character that I've loved of yours over the years. Stan Sitwell in Arrested Development.
- [09:13]
B
I love that show.
- [09:15]
A
I love that show. It is sometimes when I'm not usually bored. I live in New York City, I have a lot of work to do and I have three kids. So not usually bored. But sometimes when I am bored, I know that I can just click on any random episode interested development and it's going to be fucking amazing. But Stan Sitwell, you were a recurring character on this show. Obviously alopecia is not something to joke about. It's not a laughing matter. But the way that they portrayed you in that show was incredible, with the wig and the eyebrows and the eyebrows always falling off. It was really incredible. So I love that character. Do you have a favorite character, film or TV that you've played over the years that you can just mention real quickly, just so we can talk for a moment about Your entertainment work well.
- [10:00]
B
Stanzit well is indeed one of my favorite characters. Mitch Hurwitz is a genius in the whole cast. He assembled Jeffrey Tambor and, you know, Jason Bateman and all of that great crowd. Will Arnett, my God, just brilliant, Each and every one of them. So how lucky am I to have worked with them? And then also he did. I played Maria Bamford's dad in a show he did called Lady Dynamite. So also another brilliant show. And St. Elsewhere is very dear to my heart because I was on that for a long time by the sheer length of it, six years. I've never had another show that went past, let's say, 20 episodes. That's the only series regular job I've had that went any long period of time at all. So that's very dear to me. And then movies like she Devil, Working with Meryl Streep was a huge moment for me. She's so talented and so great. So that. That was a big deal. And then most recently, I'm in a movie called Strange Darling. Strange darling is by J.T. mulder, and it's a wonderful film, and I recommend that highly. It's a very quirky, unusual film with a real twist to it. So that's. Those are some things that mean a lot to me, and as they all do, I'm very lucky to be 75 years of age and still working. I know how lucky I am.
- [11:17]
A
Yeah, that's really beautiful. I did see Strange Darling last year, and, yeah, you've popped up over the years in my life, you know, Portlandia, Modern Family, these different shows. And I've always loved the twists and the flavor that you bring. So, again, we're not going to talk about that body of work necessarily today, but I wanted to sort of get that in before we begin talking about your home and going to the Oscars on the bus and your products, your cleaning products and stuff. So again, for the sake of time, let's dive into that. So, so many people talk about our climate crisis, especially on the left. It's every single day you can find, you know, an interview with a politician or a podcast or something where we're talking about doing better and, and being better. But very few people I find in my line of work that actually do the, do the, the right things, the hard work. And you have been doing that for literally decades now. So what I'd love to do is go back to the beginning, real briefly, and talk about when did that all start for you? Your father, of course, Ed Begley, Senior Award Winning theater, film, TV actor. Did it start at home or at what point did you begin thinking, hey, I need to do something about our climate crisis? And not just we, we need to do it collectively, but I need to do something. When did that start for you, Ed?
- [12:44]
B
It started to do as you just suggested, at home. You know, my dad was a conservative that liked to conserve, and so that was deep in my DNA and it was certainly in his. He was the son of Irish immigrants. He had lived through the Great Depression. So I was raised knowing you had to turn off the lights and turn off the water and save string and save tinfoil, and that's what people did. And, you know, during World War II, when my dad was in his prime, he served in the Navy, but at home, his wife waiting for his return, and his family, they, you know, collected old tires and pots and pans for the war effort and, you know, did a certain amount of sacrifice. So I think with this war on climate change, we need to mount. I think we all need to make some concessions, indeed, some sacrifices in some instances, to do what we need to do to make it happen. But keep in mind, it's not just personal action, like the stuff I did starting in 1970, that's quite worthy. But we did it also with the help of good legislation and corporate responsibility. Those are the three things you need. You can't do it with just one. You can't do it with just personal action. Me riding my bike in a bus is wonderful, but it's not going to really change things if you have that influencing the other. You go and testify before the Air Resources Board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District. You get them to implement more things, more bike lanes or what have you, more clean fuel buses. Then activism is connected with good legislation and corporate responsibility. You say, I want cleaner cars, I want cleaner cars. And they start making them and then making a profit and being successful with them. Then you got that all tied in. So those three things are it. And let me hasten to add, I talk about my father, and he was a Republican, though I'm not. We disagreed on some things, but agreed on many, many of them was. Many of the things we agreed on were the environment. A man named Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air act and the Clean Water Act. You know, so we need to do these things together. So in 1970, it was the first Earth Day, and I went to one of the organizers and I said, you know, what's the. This is a great day. I'm happy to be here celebrating for Earth Day. What about the other 364? You know what, what's the plan? And somebody said, well, we're good. We want to clean up there and clean up the water. I went, sign me up because I grew up, I grew up in the San Fernando Valley and you couldn't see that it was a valley 300 days a year or something like, wow, you know, you couldn't see the Santa Monica Mountains and the Simi Hills and the Verdugo Mountains. They were invisible to you. It wasn't just visual blight. Oh, I don't get to see my mountains. It hurt your lungs when you breathe. You would as a kid talk like this because you couldn't. And I'm not an asthmatic now, nor was I then. But you couldn't catch your breath. It was very, very bad. So I knew they weren't making it up about the air quality. Likewise, didn't. I didn't think they were making it up about the water either. Because I went down to the ocean when the Santa Barbara oil spill happened and I saw the horrible pollution from that that occurred after the Santa Barbara oil spill. And though I didn't travel there, I saw pictures of, and video of the Cuyahoga river in 1969 when it caught fire. So these things, I think that's near Cleveland. These things I think influenced what happened in 1970, the first Earth Day. All that smog got people motivated like me. That Santa Barbara oil spill got people motivated. The Cuyahoga river catching fire got people motivated. And we started to do things. And the most important thing, I want to stress again my dad, I can't leave him out. He said, you know, he said, do something, don't just talk about it, number one. And he was always, as I am, a fiscal conservative. I didn't go broke in 1970 buying solar panels that were hard to find and I couldn't afford, you know, I wanted things like that. I want a faster, better electric car than one I bought in 1970. But I didn't go broke. I did what I could. I became a vegetarian, I started recycling, I started composting, you know, I baking soda instead of harsh, you know, cleansers, vinegar and water instead of the ammonia based things, what have you. And that's why I offer a line of cleaning products to this day. Just type in Begley's cleaning products and it'll come right up. We have some wonderful non toxic cleaning products that we use. So I try to do it in my career as a actor to get good messages out about the environment and with my investments, to be part of a company that's making something clean and good. So that's what I've tried to do. And I'll shut up in a second after I give you some good news, because I've talked about all the problems we have, climate change in the smog, Cuyahoga river. All that's true. Number one, the Cuyahoga river does not catch fire anymore. That waterway has been cleaned up. Most importantly, even though in Los Angeles, where I still live, we have four times the cars and millions more people, we have a fraction of the smaller. If we just had the same amount of smog from 1970, go, damn, we're good. Four times the cars and millions more people, and that smog didn't get one bit worse. We're geniuses. We don't get to just say that. We get to say we have a fraction of the smog in most places now. Most places important to note because people who live near the fulfillment centers, you know, box, you know, those big box store kind of things, the ports of Los Angeles and Long beach, people who live near freeway interchanges, they're still breathing dirty air. We can't forget about them. We have to clean up that air, too. But where I live, the San Fernando Valley there is very clean. When you don't have a fire burning in Topanga and in Pacific Palisades and in Malibu, those people now are breathing dirty air again, as we did through most of the 80s and a good deal of the 90s, they're breathing that kind of horrible air again because of those fires. So we can do something. We just have to all do it together.
- [18:25]
A
It's really heartening to listen to you because a lot of the people that are involved in climate work of all kinds, they. It feels very heavy these last few years. And now with this new administration, we'll try not to talk about this new administration all that much, but it seems like there's going to be some rolling back. I don't think we were doing amazing, you know, in the last administration. I, I don't presume it'll get any better under this one, but. So it's heartening to find people not only that are finding the positive things that we're doing, but also you've been doing it for so long and you're still trying to find the positive things. You mentioned earlier that you are 75 years young, and so it could be easy again for you to feel a little bit of resignation, to like, okay, I did what I Did. I did what I could during my life and, you know, I won't have to deal with the ramifications, the consequences of all the bad decisions that are made from the top all the way to the bottom. But it seems like you're still very encouraged and optimistic about that. Has that been hard to maintain over the years, or do you find it, maybe it's your personality or maybe it's some other thing that you've been taught in life? Do you find it hard or easier to stay resolute, to stay. Hey, we've got to do something together and we've got to keep going. Even as after decades of doing this.
- [19:48]
B
I'm not a quitter and I don't want to quit on this one. This is the climate issue. Something. You don't want to sit this one out. It's. It's the big one. It's, you know, LA Air cleaning that up all over the planet. It's something that's going to affect us all. It's something that is right now affecting us all. People have lots of theories about what went wrong with those fires in Malibu and Topanga, the Palisades. For me, it's definitely caused by climate change. That's what's making it happen. An arson may have started one of the fires. We'll find out about that, or one or more of the fires.
- [20:21]
A
Right.
- [20:21]
B
But you can't. There's stronger wildfires than ever, more frequent than ever, and that's climate change right there. So we have to do something about it. And if the door is closed to me and talking about people in other parts of the country, then the coast, if their door is closed to me, talking about climate change, they don't want to hear about it. They don't believe in it. I know that front door is closed. I come around the side door and knock.
- [20:45]
A
There you go.
- [20:45]
B
Get about all that. I'm sorry, I was talking about something you weren't interested in. Here's what I'm selling for you now here at your side door. Let's clean up the air in Houston and Bakersfield. Let's lessen our dependence on foreign oil. Let's put money in our pocket. How about those three? Clean up the air in our city, starting with Houston and Bakersfield, predominantly red areas in the voting. Let's lessen our dependence on foreign oil. Good for our national security and save money. How about those three? And I've got ways to do that, that are tried and true before you produce 1 kilowatt of wind or solar power. We need to make all of our offices and homes more energy efficient. That's number one. Because people regularly come to me, holler at people and people from all walks of life. I want to do what you did. I want to get some solar panels, and I want to such and such and such. Okay, here's a number to call. I found one in your area. Write this down. This is Minneapolis Energy audits. No, no, no, I want solar panels. I don't want. No, before I give you any solar number, I want you to do home energy audit, or one on your office or wherever you want to make it more efficient. You reduce your demand first. Then Instead of buying 6 or 8 kilowatts of solar panels, you really only need 4 or 5. So you reduce your demand first. Very conservative principle. Use less, conserve. And then you, if you have the wherewithal to do it, and there's. It makes economic sense, then you put up your solar panels on your roof, or you invest in a wind turbine or something, but reduce demand first. And if we did that, if we really were aggressive about that and saw what we could do, and I think we can do a lot with making our homes and offices more energy efficient. We don't need a fraction of the solar wind power that many people think we do. If we made everything more efficient.
- [22:32]
A
Can you talk for a second? Since you brought up homes and offices, can you talk for a minute about your home? Because your home is pretty incredible. I know we don't have the time for you to go through all of the things that you've done to make your home. I don't know if it's virtually net zero or virtually zero impact, but it's pretty, pretty low compared to, you know, most everyone else around you probably. Can you just talk about. Because a lot of people might be like, well, what can I do besides get, you know, more environmentally friendly light bulbs and, you know, use less water? Like, what are some of the things that you did to your home to make it again? Just very low impact on the planet.
- [23:08]
B
When I started in 1970, I owned. Not owned, I rented an apartment. I didn't own anything, so there's only so much I could do. I composted in a little diaper pail with a lid on it and took it somewhere near the railroad tracks and buried it. Just to have it returned to the soil and not be polluted with, you know, cans of lacquer, thinner, what have you in a landfill. So I did that, and stuff miraculously grew near the railroad tracks there just for Whenever rain came and tomato seeds I had in my compost. So I got, I said one day I'm going to own a house. The day I take ownership of that house, I'm going to grow vegetables, fruits and vegetables and I'm going to compost and do all that on a grander scale. So I did it at a rate that was financially sustainable. And that's the key, you pick the low hanging fruit first and do what you can, home or apartment and make it more efficient. So when I lived in an apartment I did, you know, again became a vegetarian, non toxic cleaners, you know, composted, rode my bike for transportation, took public transportation to get around as well. All of that helped. Then night and it saved me money. That's the most important thing. I want to stress all that stuff that I did, think about it, it's all vegetarian. Baking soda, vinegar and water. It's all going to save you money. So you do that stuff that saves you money. Take that money, invest it. After you've gotten a bit of it from a few years of doing it or sometimes even a few months of doing it, you buy yourself a little solar oven that you can use. Whereas I did, I bought a rain barrel. Pretty soon I had a house and I could grow my own vegetables. Pretty soon I had enough money when I was doing St. Elsewhere to invest not in some high yield stock that was energy production of the worst kind. But I invested in a wind turbine in the California desert. I owned part of a wind farm there. So that got efficient and lent me, gave me the bragging rights to say I was negative carbon footprint because of that one wind turbine that I owned in the California desert. And 1985 I put solar in my house for the first time. It was not solar electric, but solar hot water. That was more bang for the buck back then. And then finally 1990 I had a house that I lived in for 26 years that I put solar on and made very energy efficient. And it had a very low electric and water bill. But I was living there alone and eventually my wife wanted more closet space. So we moved to the home we're in today. But that home I lived in for 26 years was very energy efficient. But you can only take an old home so far because the walls are too thin and it does not have what they call passive solar design. You know, it's all the glass that you have in the house is on the south side and the heat and the sun comes in wintertime. It does not come in when the sun is More straight up in the summertime. So did all that sort of stuff. And what I have now is just if every home in America, people did what they could afford to do and what different government programs to get us energy efficient, less dependent on foreign oil. If we had energy programs that supported people in doing that, we could do incredible things. We'd have a lot less pollution and have a lot less risk around the world because of foreign oil. But I, I have 9 kilowatts of solar in this house. The walls are 12 inches thick. I have a 10,000 gallon rainwater tank underground that I use for irrigation and for fire safety. Now I have that available to be 10,000 gallons. The house is made out of steel, which I know the listeners are going to say, wait a minute, steel uses a lot of energy to make. What's he talking about? I've been near a messy steel plant. Everything you say is true. That is correct. But what is the cost of harvesting that wood? There's energy used to harvest the wood and transport it to kiln, dry it. They put it in a kiln and dry it. That takes energy. And what have you gets to your house and then what does it cost? And now pay attention to this and this only if you're listening. The cost of rebuilding again and again, what's that cost of building out of wood? Burns down, build out of wood again. Burns down, build out of wood again. How many times are we going to do that before we realize we have to do something different? So steel comes out ahead for me in that sense also. There's no mold that can grow on steel. There's no termites that eat steel. There's all these things that you have with steel. In earthquakes it's much better because instead of a nail, you know, that can get worked out, you know, pull out of another piece of wood. It's a screw that's harder to come apart. Steel buildings do come down in an earthquake. I'm not delusional. I'm not saying my house is definitely going to stand. Just has a better chance of standing because of the nature of steel. So everything that I did, I have four separate zones for heating and air with highly efficient seer rating of 20 heating and air units. And if my wife wants a particularly warm or cool summer or winter in her room, her area, she can have that. And I'm not roasting or freezing in my area. I have a pretty good temperature range. So I don't have to use much energy in my zone for heating or cooling year round. We have A gray water system, you know, that gives us all the water we need for the fruit trees. I have a vegetable garden. I grow a lot of food. I have six raised beds that produce a lot of food for the table. I make my own compost. And when you do something like make compost, keep in mind you're saving energy in two ways. You're not driving to the nursery, getting bags of compost, and then again using the fuel, bring it back to your house. You're keeping all that waste, that yard waste, those table scraps on site. No energy, just taking it elsewhere. You're not buying it from somewhere, saving that money. You're making it on site. And that stuff. Old soil makes new soil, Old vegetable scraps makes new vegetables, and just keep doing it. And I'm going to right now, give everybody listening the tip to making compost, because people don't know a lot about this. And it's hard to remember the carbon to nitrogen ratio that you need to have good compost. But the great thing is, you don't need to know that number. All you need to know is this. Half brown and half green. Brown is brown leaves, brown is brown grass clippings, brown is brown sawdust. That's all brown. Green is green leaves, green grass, green table scraps, half brown and half green. Keep it wet, but not soaking wet. You'll have perfect compost every time. And if, like, starting a good yogurt with a good culture, you know, you need a culture to start yogurt and, like, doing that to start good compost. If you have a friend who has a pony, I go down to the pony rides here at Griffith park, say, do you mind if I shovel some of your horse manure? Be my guest. They say they're happy to have somebody take it away. And I start to each. I have five different compost bins at different stages of decomposition. And you put a nice shovel full of horse manure in there, boom. It gets fired up right away. It gets hot. You want to have nice, warm compost. That means it's working hot, you know, wet, but not too wet. And they're all in. Every compost container I have is a drum now, so it's easy to turn it around, to spin it and mix it, and you put it in there. And pretty soon, in, you know, six, eight weeks, you have beautiful compost.
- [30:21]
A
Love that. I think all of that was so inspiring. I would imagine that some of the people listening, who are a lot of young people, young activists, are earlier on in their career trying to Figure out what the hell they're going to do in life. And they're thinking, there's no way I can ever do that. That is so big and enormous and yes, aspirational and inspirational. So for the listener, I want you to, I want you to hear two things. A listen to what Ed did 40 years ago when he didn't have the house, he didn't have the established career, the little guys. It's the little things. It is. Do what you can. You might not be able to have know 12 inch thick walls on this house that you don't even know if you'll ever be able to own. But what you can do is in your apartment, in your little home, wherever you live, you can compost. And that's why I want to transition here in a minute to talk about the, your products because again, you might not be able to build the big home that is super energy efficient, that is super low impact on the planet, but you can buy better products. You can compost, you can make some changes now that can have again if millions of people stopped making excuses for not having Ed Begley's home and started doing the little things that they can do right now, today, we can't. I think we will see a lot of pressure being put on ourselves, the people around us, and on politicians and those that can actually make the change. So let's, let's talk about these products for a minute or two. I want to give them, I want to give them time because I think it's really important again and everybody listening can afford, you know, I think better products, right? They can stop buying some shit that they don't actually need and maybe put some energy into products that are going to honor their own bodies, their pets, their homes. So talk about the Begley's Earth Responsible Products journey and what, what you all offer.
- [32:10]
B
You know, I wanted to, I used vinegar and water for years, you know, to clean up instead of ammonia based, you know, Windex or what have you. I used baking soda to clean up. And those things work very good, but not well enough for many people. And, and I'm one of them as it turns out, because when I got married the first time and now the second time, I certainly others in the household had a different idea of clean than I had. They wanted to be a little more aggressive with it. So the cleaning products you make, any way you make them toxic or non toxic, they have to perform well. And I'm going to say something that's going to be heresy to my friends at, you know, Begley's Earth Responsible products. But I mean it by any good environmental cleaner, Seventh Generation has great ones. Ecos has great products. They're very good and very clean. Mine happened to me. They clean very, very well. And they're cost effective too. They really do a good job for the amount of money that you spend. So just type in Begley Cleaning and you'll see, you know, some cleaning product choices that'll come up. They work better than any toxic cleaner I've ever used. So that's the thing, they have to perform well. They can't just be non toxic. You gotta meet people where they, where they want things. Which is, you know, an aggressive cleaner.
- [33:27]
A
Yep.
- [33:28]
B
And I've been doing it for a while and we've got great products. We've got a pet stain and odor remover, we've got a floor cleaner. We've got several products that you can check out again just search either on Amazon or just do a Google search for Begley cleaning products and it'll come up. And I wanted to do something with my investment money rather than invest in some, something that wasn't green. I thought that was a good idea and I wanted to do something with my sponsorship, you know, in my, you know, brand, my market, brand marketing kind of realm. That was something that was beneficial and not just, you know, something flighty or frivolous. And these products are very, very good. My friend Mark Cunningham makes them at Lab Clean and I had a line of products before that that was very good too. But I was, I got too busy as an actor. I was shipping stuff. I had pallets of cleaner in my garage and my daughter was helping me ship them around the country. So it was a lot of work. But now this guy, Mark Cunningham is great. He takes care of all that, the shipping and all of it. We have really good products so I would recommend that people try them. I think you'll really, I think you really enjoy the way that they work.
- [34:39]
A
All of the, the links that, that Ed has been mentioning, they will all be in the show notes friends where you can buy these. Also there's a five minute interview that I forget the name of the org that did it with you, but they did a walkthrough of your house. So if you want to hear or if you want to see in person friends, what the house looks like and how these actually like look in real life, I'll link to that interview as well. You just mentioned your daughters helping you ship some of this stuff out sort of in the earlier days. I'm a father of three kids. Mine are younger than yours, mine are 10, 11 and 12. We're raising them, you know, in, or raising them in New York City. I love living here. In fact, I've never, you know, you're talking about your home. I love renting. I've never owned a home and I, if it were up to me, I would, I would never own a home. I love the idea of renting and being able to move and, and the one thing that makes me think deeply about owning a home someday, especially if we stay in a place like New York City, is this idea of. I'll get back to your, I mentioned your daughters. I'll get back to them in a second. But this idea of like peer pressure in what, what happens when you take seriously, in this case the environment, in creating a very eco friendly space, what that does to the people around you. I'm sure that what you have done with your home has influenced other people, not just globally as you've done interviews and as you've talked about in your book and otherwise, but even in the immediate vicinity. I interviewed Professor Robert Frank, who distinguished professor from Cornell, now retired, about a book he wrote called under the Influence Putting Peer Pressure to Work. And it was essentially the argument that the strongest predictor of anyone's willingness to make changes in our lives, in the case of the book he's talking about slowing down the climate crisis is the number of people around you that are already doing so. So I wonder, have you seen peer pressure at work again, not just you being able to talk about it and people saying, yes, I'm going to make changes. But even in your own immediate vicinity in la, I assume over the years you've seen people begin to take it seriously for themselves because they see you doing that. I assume that's true.
- [36:45]
B
Yes. Peer pressure works if you do it the right way. People regularly come up to me and they say, you know, people I know and people I don't know say, look, I love to get a fancy electric car like you got with 9 kilowatts of solar that you got in the 12 inch thick walls, but I can't afford that. I went, neither could I. I'm only asking you to do it exactly the way I did it back when I started. You don't run up to the top of Mount Everest. You get the base camp and you get acclimated and you see how high you can climb. Not everybody's going to make it to the top, to the Summit and own 9kW of solar and own a wind turbine in the California desert and drive a highly efficient electric car with a 300 mile range. But you do what you can and that's what people need to do. You pick that low hanging fruit first by the light bulbs, the energy efficient light bulbs. Get the energy saving thermostat. Buy a solar oven if you have a place front or backyard to use it and set it up. They're small, they're not that big. They're the size of like a bread box or two. Ride a bike if weather and fitness permit. Take public transportation if it's available near you. Every single thing on that list, Nick, I just cited, not only is cheap, it's super cheap. It's what people do. We're out there, the working poor people have very little resources. They ride a bike to work or take a bus to work because they can't afford anything else. They haven't even considered the green factor of it. They're just trying to get from point A to point B. Eating lower in the food chain. As much plant based food as you can eat, you know, is also very inexpensive, you know, less expensive than buying meat certainly.
- [38:13]
A
Yep.
- [38:14]
B
So on and on. All these things that you do, do that stuff first and then take a breather, see how you do. See how your bank account looks. I predict in every single case. I've never had somebody come up and said I did it the way you said I did, the simple cheap stuff first and I didn't save a dime. Nobody's once said that because it's not possible. You know, if they did any of them in any order, practically, you're going to save money and quickly. Some of it, you know, like light bulbs and thermostat, you're going to save money in like three, four months. You don't even have to wait a year to see annual income and expenses change. So do that, do something like that. That really works. But keep in mind there's three pillars. Personal action, essential corporate responsibility and good legislation. That's how we clean up the air. In la, we did the personal action and we got corporate responsibility people to build cleaner cars. And then the Clean Air act helped us enforce it and get it cleaner. In Los Angeles, the air is much better. So that's what you need. You need those three things. But start with what you fully control, which is your buying habits. And that's, you know, we get to vote on election day, everybody knows that, Nick, but you get to vote every day of the week in the supermarket aisles and the showroom. Floors and the appliance stores. That's your vote. You're voting with your dollars. And there's a very strong and important vote.
- [39:34]
A
I am so glad that we're sort of climaxing this conversation with that little sermon that you just gave, because that really is the truth that like so many, so many people get so disillusioned and bogged down because they think voting is once every two years or every four years or. And they only think politically when voting. You're 100% correct in that we're voting every single day. Where we go, how we get there, what we eat, what we don't eat, the clothes we buy, the. The homes we live in, all of that is voting. And we've seen especially, I think, especially the last few years with more boycotts, you know, rising up, whether it's about what's happening in Gaza or what's happening in our environment or what's happening anywhere, we see that boycotts work. When we believe in something, if we want to stop putting our money in that place or that place, the capitalism responds. Right? And so I. I think that's so incredibly important. That little word that you gave there at the end. I would be remiss again if I didn't mention you've referenced it a couple times, but. And I want to reference it here, your memoir, released in 2023, to the temple of Tranquility and step on it. You and I. I initially connected with your team back when this book was out and we were supposed to be on together back then, and something happened in one of our schedules.
- [40:48]
B
Right.
- [40:49]
A
I read it. I read it. I read it back then. Absolutely. It's funny, it's fantastic. And all the things, your upbringing, your dad, your career, your climate, work, it's all in here. A wonderful, wonderful read. If Amazon is the best place for you to get that, that's fine. But as always, I encourage you to go to your local bookstore or if you have to shop online, go to bookshop.org which supports independent bookshops. Ed, you have the last word here. This has been so good, but do you have anything else you want to share with the let's Give a Damn audience about your work, about the climate crisis, about how we can move forward? I know you've already said a lot, but I want to give you one more chance.
- [41:25]
B
Yeah. The most important thing at the root of all of this, live simply so that others may simply live.
- [41:35]
A
Incredible, Ed. You're incredible. Thank you for spending some time with me. And I hope we can do it again sometime.
- [41:41]
B
Anytime. Nick, you're a joy to talk to, buddy. Thank you. Thank you. It.