← The Rich Roll Podcast
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- [00:01]
Rich Roll
Movement is so much more than just exercise or training or motion even. Movement is a language. It's a way of connecting body, mind and environment. Movement as a way of being, a way of being that brings me close to myself, closer to other people, and to what matters most in life. And for me, what we wear in that pursuit plays a crucial role. And that's what I appreciate about on they engineer apparel that supports and and elevates the practice of movement itself. From running shorts with built in support to technical tees that cool you down right where it matters. This is apparel born from precision and tested by elite athletes, but made for anyone committed to the path. I've been with on since 2023 and I'm still just so impressed by how they continue to elevate and innovate in the name of purpose, not Flash. Head to on.comrichroll to explore gear that supports you every step of the way. Unless you're new to the show, if so, welcome. You know that I've been plant based for quite a while. About 17 years in fact, and as an athlete I can tell you that I know more than most when it comes to plant based protein products. I've tried them all beginning around 2007 when I remember that I had to drive like over an hour to the only store in all of Los Angeles that even carried the one product that existed back then. Things have changed, of course, but that choice creates confusion and most of the products that are out there, let's face it, fall way short of the mark. Grainy textures, chalky taste, questionable ingredients, poor nutritional profiles, you name it. But I am here to cut through all of that confusion and make it easy for you with one word. Momentous. Not just another plant based protein powder, but the protein supplement. To end the discussion, it's pea and rice protein that's sourced exclusively from the US and Canada. Clean ingredients, no unnecessary gums or fillers, just pure protein that actually tastes great. In terms of quality. Every batch is NSF certified for sport, tested to rigorous standards. And what that means is that this is nutrition that professional athletes rely upon, which embodies momentous commitment to performance. For me, it's always been about finding a brand that brings genuine integrity to nutrition and Momentous consistently delivers on that promise. So if you're ready to upgrade your protein game, head to livemomentous.com richroll or or use the code Richroll at checkout for 35% off your first subscription. That's livemomentous.com Richroll for 35% off your first subscription. The Rich Roll Podcast.
- [02:57]
Darren Olien
There's 9,000 different forms of PFAS in our environment. 9,000. Just as a context, almost everyone has it in their blood. Let's become aware of this stuff so that we can make another choice.
- [03:16]
Rich Roll
Hey everybody. Welcome to the podcast. You know what today is? Today is another re release, and an important one at that. This is an episode that I re listened to recently and found just as profound as I did the first time around. So I want you to think about this. Is it possible that many of the products that you use every single day, your deodorant, your toothpaste, or even your clothes, are quietly harming your body in invisible ways, in ways you're not even aware it's actually true? In fact, so many things that we habitually do buy and use, things we simply consider normal, part and parcel of our everyday modern life, are actually toxic to our bodies. Some of these things we're already well aware of. Breathing unclean air, for example, or things like fast food drive throughs, or spending too much time sedentary or endlessly scrolling our screens. But lurking another layer below are other harms more well hidden things that we've been sold as safe, but actually aren't. Not even tested in many cases at least with respect to their impact long term. From hormone disruptors to forever chemicals, we're actually surrounded by invisible threats in products we trust, routines we follow, and habits we never question. So pervasive is this malevolence. It motivated me to re release an episode I first published two years ago with my favorite friend of all things clean living, my superhero superfood hunting brother from another mother, Darren Olien. In this great and wide ranging conversation about the fatal conveniences of modern society. Worthy of your attention if you missed it when it first published, but equally so even if you did catch it upon its initial release. So that's it. There you go. And here we go. This is me and Darren Oline. Well, good to see you. Thank you for coming back. I was thinking about the many times that you've appeared on this podcast. You've always been such a popular guest. This is your fifth appearance, so I think we've logged somewhere between eight or ten hours of conversations.
- [05:28]
Darren Olien
Amazing.
- [05:29]
Rich Roll
Going all the way Back to our first episode was. Was 153. That was way back.
- [05:34]
Darren Olien
Wow.
- [05:35]
Rich Roll
Yeah.
- [05:35]
Darren Olien
How many are you at now?
- [05:36]
Rich Roll
So we're in this mid. Seven. Seven.
- [05:39]
Darren Olien
Wow.
- [05:40]
Rich Roll
40 something. I don't know. 750.
- [05:42]
Darren Olien
That was in this back room. You know, just like in this little engine Engineering room or something.
- [05:50]
Rich Roll
I can't remember where the first one was that we did. Was it at my house or.
- [05:54]
Darren Olien
No, no, no, it was at your partner's business.
- [05:57]
Rich Roll
Oh, yeah. I mean, we've had a few locations, but we got our HQ here. You've been here many times. But not, not a guest on the podcast, so welcome.
- [06:08]
Darren Olien
Thank you, man.
- [06:09]
Rich Roll
Yeah, man, we've covered so many things over those episodes. We've talked about superfoods, of course, plant based nutrition. We went deep on water and hydration. We talked about barucas and all the work that you've done in the rainforest and the various, you know, regions across South America and all your travels. We've talked about breath brain states. We talked about down to Earth. I think the last time you were on, which was mid pandemic.
- [06:38]
Darren Olien
Right.
- [06:38]
Rich Roll
So lots happened since. Since the last time, man. Another season of down to Earth and now you've got this new book, Fatal Conveniences. So congratulations, buddy.
- [06:49]
Darren Olien
Thanks, dude. Yeah, you know, I know two and a half years of dude.
- [06:54]
Rich Roll
I know how long and how hard you've been working on this thing, like an albatross, you know, around your neck. A lot went into it. I loved it and I think it's really going to help a lot of people. It's really powerful. My experience in reading the book was weirdly, this strange combination of it both being on the one hand like a very breezy, easy read. Like, it's very easy to kind of like go through it and at the same time, this extremely dense, you know, comprehensive almost, you know, research paper where you basically canvas every single thing that's out in the world trying to kill us. And the main takeaway is kind of, you know, goddamn, it's hard to be a conscious human in the modern world, isn't it? It's fucking inconvenient.
- [07:40]
Darren Olien
It's very inconvenient, you know. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's this one. This shocked me a bit. I naively said, I'm gonna write this book because I, you know, in parallel to 30 years of kind of the start of understanding this with my dad, which we can unpack and talk about a little bit. But this has been a part of my life ever since then. So I'm like, yeah, no problem. I know a bunch of this stuff. Let's write a book. I'll be able to crank it out in six months. I literally thought that that was the first kind of idea. And then two and a half years later. Yeah, because it's like when you really, it's like as anything rich, right? When you, when you really look and really ask questions and really start to study something, mostly it's more complex than you can possibly imagine anything in life. All environmental issues, all of these chemicals, why they're there, why they're not there, whatever it is, it's always very complex. And so that's why flippantly in this world, when you're seeing people just making comments and this kind of click baitable stuff, it doesn't do a lot of service to the complexity of things. And our mutual friend Paul Hawken is such a great example of inviting the powers that be into the conversation and into proactivity of how to make changes and, and, and even, you know, on, on down to earth. And we sat, sat down with the professor who wrote Black Emu after try losing track of his name right now that, you know, you know, we go into all these complex issues and he says, you know, we say what do we do? And he literally says, have tea and talk about it with each other so that we come together. So it's like, so that being said, every chapter in that book is so complex and so big that easily could have been a book.
- [10:11]
Rich Roll
Yeah, of course. I mean that's a really powerful perspective that as you mentioned, is applicable across the board to whatever subject matter you're trying to understand. We go into these things thinking we have an idea of what it is. Oh, it's black and white. It's us versus them. We see a lot of that on the Internet. The algorithm favors the us versus them model and amplifies that. And a lot of so called quote unquote experts spewing here and there in a way that makes it sound like the they know what they're talking about, but not necessarily is that a good arbiter of true wisdom. And mastery, as you know, is the capacity to really immerse yourself in a subject matter where you go on that journey where you think you know and then the more you know, the more you realize you don't know. And then ultimately, through lifelong dedication, you come out the other side and have some level of, of wisdom matched with humility and you're able to communicate it in simplistic terms. And I think a lot of people, particularly on the Internet, are pretenders to that level of mastery and they hide behind a lot of language and a lot of phraseology that makes people think that they know what they're talking about. But real mastery is being able to condense it down and explain things simply with that level of humility. And I feel like on some level, not to overly project here, I don't know that you would consider yourself a master on any of the subjects, these rabbit holes that you went down. But you were able to communicate really complex stuff in, like I said, a very readable way. And each one of these chapters is a launching pad or a starting gate for somebody to go deeper into their own exploration.
- [12:06]
Darren Olien
Yeah, I think what you said, I agree 1,000%. And that book is definitely an example of knocking me back a notch, thinking, I know and sitting me in the seat of like, this is number one. So shocking. I don't know how many times, Rich, going through each chapter and each research, I was like, what the fuck is going on? Like, I don't. I'm reading it and I still don't understand why this is happening. Right. So that coupled with just the enormous amount of research that was used and cited and helped guide, I'm going, oh my God, I'm a forever student, Forever student of this modern day conundrum that we're in. Because we all were born into it, all of us, right? And we weren't even given our first breath and we were already inoculated with chemicals in the umbilical cord. And it shows up many different studies, many different ways. And that's the shocking thing. And did you have a choice? Did that little baby in the womb have a choice in utero? No. So you know all of this stuff. Yeah, man, it's. It knocked me back. I wanted to quit. My researchers going back to the table. This isn't working. This isn't working. And then you realize, wow, I am so naive to all of this stuff. And that this literally takes a village and a team and professionals to amass this knowledge and try to put it. And now to answer one of those things about trying to make it palatable and digestible for someone, a technique that I constantly use. Shout out to my brother, Troy. He doesn't know this, but I constantly listen through his perception of the world.
- [14:19]
Rich Roll
So it was sort of written with him in my. Like he was the audience member that you were writing for.
- [14:25]
Darren Olien
Because if he doesn't. My brother's like, if he learns something and he can understand it, it's not all people are like this. But he goes, oh, well, why would I do that? Why would I drink out of this microplastic induced, estrogen mimicking phthalate filled plastic water bottle when I can just go, all right, I got tested. Well, water and I'll use a glass. Why would you drink out of plastic now, knowing what it is. So with that, you know, I don't mean this disparagingly, but just a simple common sense filter of looking at the world. I wanted to make the book with infinite complexity, make it so that my brother, my mom, Midwestern roots of family and people and friends could read this book and go, okay, I get it.
- [15:24]
Rich Roll
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think you succeed on that front, you know, on the one level, you know, you can read this book and basically the thesis is like, everything we use, buy, eat, wear, everything we sleep on, everything we use to keep cool or clean ourselves or our stuff is bad and is trying to kill us. Right. It's like kind of dispiriting, dystopic in many ways. And it's easy to obviously be overwhelmed by that and perhaps freaked out. It's a matrix, like experience as you kind of describe in the book. But it's paired with solutions and an optimistic kind of tonality to it in that it provides all of us with a kind of call to action to reclaim our sovereignty. And I know sovereignty is a big. That's big with you. To really recognize our own agency and shoulder the responsibility that we all have to make better choices for ourselves. And on some level, that's empowering. And those choices, one single choice by one single person isn't going to change the world. But in macro, you scale that up, and the more consumers are conscious of those choices, the more our capitalist society responds to meet that demand. And that's the inclusive. Like, you bring people into the conversation. I mean, that's really the macro thing here. It's like we can point fingers and say, these people are bad or evil, this product should be banned, et cetera. But ultimately, change is forged through mature conversations with, you know, people in the seats of power who can, you know, change the course of how we do these things. Right? And if you alienate them and don't create a welcoming environment to have that conversation to begin with, you're never going to get off the dime.
- [17:22]
Darren Olien
Yeah, yeah. And that's the. You know, on the one hand, you know, you and I have been in the health space for a long time. You know, I wrote Super Life, super stoked to write that as my first book and kind of get this foundational principle out. And then, then it finally dawned on me, you know, and Harper came back like, hey, man, like, we can write another book. What would you. And I'm just going just like, blaringly obvious was this invisible, hard to pin down world of chemicals and EMFs and toxicology that is pervasive, pervasive everywhere. That is hitting us on so many different angles. Hundreds of interactions of lab created chemicals every day, all day. That literally disrupting our endocrine system, disrupting and lowering testosterone, thyroids, pituitary, you name it. And it just keeps going. So I'm like, okay, well, I'm writing something on the one hand of super life, trying to help people get better, but then this invisible elephant right in the room of our world is just screaming in my head and the full circle, because my dad was the first teacher. You know, as a teacher, he then taught me, hey, man, in order for me to be around you. And I was studying college, I was soaking up physiology at the time, But I still thought my dad was weird. But my dad was the first one telling me. And through his discovery of he was chemically sensitive, right? And then I'm like, dad's crazy, right? Maybe he's, you know, he was the angry, dry drunk most of my life, and now some. Something else is happening. But then when he'd say, hey, man, he'd send that care package to me in college. You're coming home this weekend? Well, you got to do laundry with this unscented brand, this bar soap, this shampoo, this conditioner, and don't wear these kind of clothes. When I actually then did it, because in order to hang out with him and see him, I had to abide by these things. I then started to realize how desensitized I was from all of these things. And I started to feel better, even though I didn't know I was not feeling all that optimal. And then, you know, so that was the start. And my dad's mystery became him being the first person to start, not the first person in his area. And maybe Southern California to really start to investigate this through multiple doctors that were trying to figure out why he had neurological decline. He had depression. He literally could not. His endocrine system was being hijacked. His nervous system was being hijacked. His stress response was being hijacked. So finally he was able to get to like, oh, there's the azo dyes coming off of my favorite Harley T shirts, you know, my blue jeans, my paints, my fire retardants, my, you know, any smells, perfumes, parfum. All of this stuff.
- [21:10]
Rich Roll
Yeah. All that cologne you were wearing back in the day, right? Totally TRA car noir. Totally all over Big D. Oh, my God.
- [21:19]
Darren Olien
God.
- [21:19]
Rich Roll
Freshman year in college, right?
- [21:21]
Darren Olien
Sure.
- [21:22]
Rich Roll
Yeah. I mean, the thing that's so interesting about this, you know, and I've heard you share about your dad many times, but I learned a lot more about that backstory that I didn't know. And, you know, for those that are listening or watching, it's easy to think. Well, Darren kind of jumped on this fatal conveniences idea when he started doing segments on his podcast talking about this. Those got popular. You started making reels on Instagram, little videos, like little nuggets on this concept. But it really does go all the way back to your childhood and this condition that your dad suffered from at a time where, you know, not only was that weird, like, I can imagine, you know, how other people responded to that. You talk a little bit about it in the book. Like, people didn't know what it was or what caused it, or the fact that you have to, you know, jump through all these hoops just to be in his presence must have been, you know, very foreign and perhaps off putting to a lot of people.
- [22:21]
Darren Olien
Yeah, it was really hard for him. I mean, here's the, you know, the male figure in my life who's kind of being. You can't see what's going. You can't see what the abuse that's happening inside his head.
- [22:34]
Rich Roll
So he's just nuts. Right. You know, he must be crazy. He was a veteran, you know, and then you tell on top of the whole thing. I didn't know that. The whole story of the Keepers of the Dragon and his experience on this aircraft carrier during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is wild.
- [22:52]
Darren Olien
Yeah. So he started putting pieces together that I didn't even know he was involved in that till that Kevin Costner movie came out, talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis. My dad started crying in front of me. First time I've ever seen him cry. And. And I finally asked him, like, why are you so emotional over this? And then he, you know, told me this whole thing. He was one of the keepers of the Dragon, which they called this small group of people that took care of the atomic bomb, that loaded it up, that got it ready. That was a partial engineer job. And so these guys were the harbingers of this nuclear bomb. And so he was around that. So that obviously, the stress and the craziness of that, he never shared it. But the one thing that it left him with was an absolute annihilation of his thyroid. Right. So then the radioactive exposure. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so he was already hijacked from an ionizing radiation, which pulls apart electrons and destroys DNA and very acutely has an affinity for the Thyroid. So he didn't have that. And so as I'm putting these pieces together and seeing kind of the front row of his life, and then it's almost like if you have this glass here, his immune system, his liver was compromised of alcoholism, and then this compromised endocrine system and thyroid, that was gone. And then you add on top of it, this exposure, this level of depression that would come in and had very little resiliency. So it's as if I took this water and I filled up this glass and it kind of spilled over. He had. He did not have a normal level of resiliency to just kind of live his life. Right. And I'm very. My conclusion is that that led him down a forced retirement with a disability because he couldn't educate his wing at the college. Right. He couldn't do it fast enough to get people to like, hey, man, I have this thing called chemical sensitivity. He would make. He was a teacher, so he'd make tapes. He would find all the research and he would send it to everybody, all of his colleagues and everything else. And then he had to retire. And then slowly he had to start giving up parts of his life. And he was very sociable. He loved connecting with people. He cared deeply. And when things were kind of being taken away from him because of this invisible thing that he couldn't abuse started showing back up in his life. After 30 years of sobriety, I'm convinced it's a absolute strong situation that. That led him to feeling not so great. And then ultimately alcohol claimed his life.
- [26:06]
Rich Roll
Right. Forced isolation, leading. Leading to that relapse.
- [26:12]
Darren Olien
Yeah, yeah.
- [26:13]
Rich Roll
It's tragic. You know, it's really.
- [26:15]
Darren Olien
It's.
- [26:15]
Rich Roll
It's really sad. But it's also powerful. You know, it's perhaps the most powerful example that you have to kind of set the stage to talk about these invisible forces that are at play that, you know, we didn't consent to even before birth, as you mentioned. And you quoted an amazing study that the. I think that is the environmental Working Group did, where they tested like umbilical cord, you know, like umbilical cords of babies and realizing how rife would with all kinds of chemicals and toxins existed there prior to birth, 200 plus.
- [26:51]
Darren Olien
And over 75% of them are known problematic cancer, utero problems, birth defects, et cetera. And that's how we're starting life. And you're like, you know, that's a. And now with, you know, pre and pro floral alkali substances called PFAS, these things now are in over 90% of Red Cross did this. Over 90% of everyone's blood is PFAS. And that's, that's a. For everyone listening, that's in a class of compounds called forever chemicals. Forever, right. And that, that is. I was thinking on the way over, I was like, what's the most startling? Because so many times, how many swear words are in here when I'm going through research going, what the fuck is happening? Right? How is this possible? PFAS is pretty gnarly because not only are they forever chemicals, and we've had examples of them too. You know, we've had examples of other forever chemicals. DDT was banned in 1972, and guess what is in over 90% of all teenagers today? DDT.
- [28:22]
Rich Roll
Yeah, I saw that in the book. That was shocking because you would think that's a bygone. Like, that doesn't exist anymore. We, we got our shit together when it came to that.
- [28:31]
Darren Olien
Yeah. And it's like. And this is where it goes into again, Rich. We have so many rabbit holes to go down.
- [28:38]
Rich Roll
Let's try to keep it on the rails.
- [28:40]
Darren Olien
But it goes. And people are going, yeah, but how is it that these things even exist? And there's a million examples in the book, right? How are these things even in the book? Well, there's a couple ways to answer that. There's plausible deniability, right? So plausible deniability is basically, well, if we don't test it in our product, then we don't know what's there. We don't know it's harmful. And then if you look at some of the studies, you're clearly showing in other randomized controlled trials that it's causing harm and mammals and mice and all these other things. So the game, those come out with the game. The game is we're going to put whatever we want for the most part in these products. And then if there's a problem, and if there's an overwhelming amount of a problem, then the quote, unquote, government regulatory bodies will step in and then do something about it, right? So, you know, we talked, I think, before we even recording. Like it's a moving target, like this book. Every week there was more stuff coming out and even before being done, and now there was simply, simply Orange got busted by the Coca Cola Company and full of a bunch of crazy stuff. But you know What? They found 200 PFAS chemicals in that being sold.
- [30:31]
Rich Roll
Simply Orange is an orange juice brand.
- [30:33]
Darren Olien
Yeah, it's an orange juice brand by the Coca Cola Company. So they didn't test it. So they, quote, unquote, didn't know. Right, right.
- [30:41]
Rich Roll
So, yeah, just to kind of tie the knot on PFAs and we can talk about more, talk about that more if you like. That was something that, that, that I talked extensively about with Erin Brockovich with respect to water and what's going on with water. You know, shocking. You can go and listen to that. We spent two hours talking about pfas and then I had Greg Renfrew on who's the founder of Beauty Counter. She created this amazing company to produce personal care products for women that were toxin free and has been a loud and very powerful voice on Capitol Hill lobbying for change. But you know, some of what she shared, you know, mimics or just overlaps perfectly with what you're saying here, basically. I mean, first of all, I don't know if this has changed, but she shared that the United States had not passed any major legislation on the safety of ingredients in personal care products since 1933. And essentially the kind of quote that you have in the book on this that she talks about is this burden of proof. Right. Basically, it's not a situation in which the company who's about to put a product on the shelf has to prove that it's safe. It can just go into use and only when evidence mounts that it's dangerous. Not just dangerous, but that the danger is overwhelming and impossible to ignore. Will the government get involved or people file lawsuits or what have you? So that's all broken and reversed. And when you look at the very long list of chemicals that find their way into all of these products that are just sort of like, well, they're safe or you know, they do these internal studies, right. Like they either don't study it before it goes on the shelf or they do a self serving study to say, yeah, we've, we've looked at it, it's safe and it's kind of a roulette wheel. Right. And meanwhile we, you know, another kind of overarching theme in the book that you make very clear is that we're living in an experiment.
- [32:45]
Darren Olien
I'm glad that you've had a couple badasses on this podcast to talk about this because I need to just as a way through the legacy of my first teacher was my dad, you know, so I have to talk about it. And I know it's affecting people. And then, so, yeah, I mean, the PFAS thing is so crazy. And so it is and it is absolutely reversed. So we think this is the internal fatal convenience of regulation. That in and of itself is a fatal convenience of how this is happening. It's a Twilight Zone of an experiment as opposed to shouldn't it be proven safe before we can blast it out to our children and put this very easy wipeable baby bib on our beautiful child? When that easy wipeable baby bib is full of PFAS because it's a non sticking, easy to wipe off. And just for context for everybody, because they should go back and listen to those other podcasts that you've mentioned. It is a grandson of Teflon. Right. It's this fluorine reaction, chemical reaction that goes on and it shows up just to give a couple examples. Every time you see something saying like a wrinkle free, run the other way. When that mascara doesn't come off, don't use it. All of these things and packaging, the, you know, not that you and I partake in fast food, but that the food doesn't stick to the wrappers. Pfas.
- [34:36]
Rich Roll
Yeah, that was the fast food wrapper. One was one I didn't know. Yeah, talk about, explain that one.
- [34:41]
Darren Olien
Yeah, so I mean, they use this again. They're taking what is thankfully how many years later being banned in the coating of pans, which is the kind of the origin story of Teflon.
- [34:56]
Rich Roll
Yeah, we all know as children of the 70s, we all remember that, the nonstick bands and, and all of that that, you know, finally.
- [35:04]
Darren Olien
But they're still. Then they're like, well, okay, well let's just use it in these other areas where we don't have to. No one knows about them, no one needs to talk about them. So Gore Tex, right? So rain resistant, stain resistant carpets, food packaging. So all of these slippery kind of surfaces, they're all derivatives of this known, probable, as they say, carcinogen and endocrine disruptor. So just as a context, almost everyone has it in their blood and they're doing. And also to understand that the numbers are staggering. There's 9,000 different forms of PFAs in our environment. 9,000, right. So we're getting hit unknowingly and we're not voting for that. So, you know, I go back to, okay, let's become aware of this stuff so that we can make another choice. And that's really where all of this comes from. Like Rich, you know, just to be straight up, I did not want to write, I didn't want to have to write a book like this. But when you realize the regulation bodies aren't regulating, they're just reacting to that cascade that happens, that then the government has to step in. But the Toxic Substance Control Act. So think about it. The Toxic Control Substance act was initiated because of pfas to then give permission for the regulatory bodies to then regulate. You're like, what? You didn't.
- [36:57]
Rich Roll
What?
- [36:58]
Darren Olien
Like everything. I'm reading this, all of this stuff, and it's. Everything's the opposite, like you said. And this is where people going, I don't get it. So if I go into a store and if I don't know which product to choose that doesn't have these things in, you're getting exposed to not only PFAs, but BPA, BPH, PCBs, DDTS, heavy metals. And the next question is, how is that possible? And the first answer I would say, I don't know. Foreign.
- [37:39]
Rich Roll
Is brought to you by Roka. You know, it's funny, we don't often think of eyewear as performance gear until it starts to get in the way. And if you're like me, somebody who has contended with eyesight impairment my entire life, it's a very real thing. Without a real solution for athletes, I cannot tell you how many times I've been mid run, constantly shoving my glasses back up my nose, tripping on roots and rocks because I couldn't see them, or my glasses had fogged up. Or what about out on the bike where the treachery is obviously far more intense? Well, this is why Roka has been a godsend for me, approaching prescription eyewear from a performance perspective first. But not at the car cost of fashion. I should say helping not only people like me, but all kinds of athletes, including Tour de France cyclists and Ironman champions with everyday frames designed for movement. Their secret is their proprietary gecko technology, patented nose and temple pads that grip even more securely when you sweat. No slipping, no distractions. And they're insanely lightweight. Most frames weigh less than a pencil. Super light, even with prescription lenses. Beyond the function, the craftsmanship is next level. Razor sharp optics, durable construction, and a design that actually is beautiful and keeps up with you. So put them on, feel the difference, and wear without limits. Unlock 20% off your order with code richroll@roka.com that's R O-K-A.com I love coffee, but the jittery anxiety that comes with it, not so much. And while I've tried my share of coffee alternatives, most fall pretty far short when it comes to that satisfying boost that I'm looking for. So when Peak sent me Nandaka, their adaptogenic coffee alternative. Let's just say I was a bit dubious that this would be any different from the others, but I gotta tell you, I was pleasantly surprised. It definitely leaves me feeling elevated, energized for sure, but also calm, focused but steady. And this is because it's made with fermented Pu erh tea which provides a slow release of caffeine. The formula is legit. It's made not only from gut health promoting probiotic teas, but also triple toxin screened fruiting body mushrooms, not mycelium including Chaga, reishi, cordyceps and lion's mane. It also has ceremonial grade cacao warming spices like ginger and cinnamon and cacao butter for enhanced absorption. All organic, all vegan, no junk and listen, it tastes great. So if you're looking to adjust your morning ritual, now's a great time to try Nandaka. You can get 20% off for life and a free starter kit that's a rechargeable frother and glass beaker when you visit peaklife.com richroll that's P I Q U E life.com richroll after many, many years of sharing my plant based journey, a common question that I just get all the time is how do I actually make this work in my daily life? And this is precisely why we created the Plant Power Meal Planner. But this meal Planner is way more than just meal planning. It's actually designed to help you nourish inward and thrive outward by simplifying healthy eating, supercharging your nutrition and helping you to stay on track with relative ease. As a Plant Power Meal Planner member, you unlock powerful tools to transform your health and take charge of your plate. Based on your preferences, you'll gain access to literally thousands of nutritionist and chef crafted recipes rooted in the Plant Power lifestyle, allowing you to build vibrant health from the inside out. And what sets this apart is complete personalization. You can create unlimited, fully customizable menus that fit your goals, your routine and your taste buds. So if you need guidance, that's on check too. Get one on one support from expert food coaches who are right there for you to help you succeed. We stream streamline the entire process. You can breeze through grocery shopping with smart lists that take the guesswork out of it and you can enjoy convenient delivery in most major cities and score exclusive member only deals on aligned brands. So check it out. It's also incredibly affordable@mealplanner.richroll.com and use the code RICHROLL for $10 off your membership. Take charge of your plate today yeah, that was my obvious next question. Given that there are good faith actors out there trying to influence the landscape. We mentioned the Environmental Working Group. They do great work. People like Paul Hawken yourself, they're out there trying to educate the public, but this seems to be really locked in. Like, what is it about our system that is so resistant to protecting the public when it comes to this kind of stuff?
- [42:58]
Darren Olien
I mean, dude, I mean, the only place I can go is we've created a false God, right? And that false God is this prophet over the health and safety. Like, it's reversed. So, you know, let's just put all this stuff out and if it's a problem, we'll deal with all of this later, you know, and so I don't understand it. I don't know why it is, but that whole thing is reversed. But, you know, I always go to the optimism of all of this stuff. The optimism is having these conversations so that you and I can amplify the message of regular people realizing that this is what it is. There is a huge amount of chemical exposure. On average, an average woman every day is getting hit with over a hundred different chemicals, all of which are some sort of form of endocrine disruption. Carcinogenic ammonium salts through the breast tissue from deodorants. You know, it just goes on and on and on. So this is. In order for us to change, we need to face it. We need to go, okay, this is realism 101. What's happening? This is what's happening. This is why I had to hire 25 people and fact checkers and pay them and work my ass off to get through all of this stuff so that we can face this honestly. And then the optimism comes by the 8 billion people we have. We have the numbers. So as we wake up, as we then go, oh, okay, well, I'm not saying don't use cell phones, don't wash your hair, maybe do a little less of them, right? That we can change from not this to this, right? We have better solutions. Obviously, a third of the book is littered with solutions for these things. So that's the hope, right? And I use this example, Rich, of like, you know, you and I spent a lot of time together, and we know that in order to have real good relationships, you gotta face not only yourself with radical honesty. You gotta face people and people in your life with radical honesty and have these very healthy but direct truthful conversations. This is the same. This is the same thing, right? I wish this wasn't the case. I wish all These chemicals weren't blasting you and me and our children with all of this stuff, but it is what we were born into. So I'm not okay with it. I saw my dad suffer firsthand and I just want to face it honestly to then uplift, support and create the waves of continued change so that we can celebrate the people putting lavender in, as opposed to a trade secret endocrine disrupting, carcinogenic property of a formula that they weirdly don't have to disclose because they just call it a trade secret. Like, let's not reward that. Let's reward the people, the companies that are trying to do the right thing. It's better for you, it's better for the people around you, and in the case of colognes and perfume, and it's ultimately better for the environment. That's where I love, which became very clear to me in the writing of this thing, that, well, we are an ecosystem, right? So if these chemicals are severely affecting my ecosystem, maybe it's changing my microbiome on my skin, affecting the sebum production because I've put some sort of weird ass lotion on my body. All of these things, how they are created, what they are from in the environmental side of things, where the production side of things are also an equally destroying parts of the environment. So as it hurts you, it hurts the environment. So you want to be an eco warrior, clean this stuff up in yourself, clean up all of these exposures. And it's not about trying to be perfect, it's just trying to make one better choice every time. Because that's the journey of life anyway.
- [47:47]
Rich Roll
Yeah, sure. I love the idea of radical honesty and kind of emerging out of this state of denial. There's a sort of blissful ignorance about how we make our consumer choices, right? We've talked a lot about factory farming and the ag gag laws. Like there's a lot of money to erect barriers to prevent the level of transparency that would connect the consumer with how our food is actually made. Because it's abhorrent and if people knew, maybe they would think twice, right? So there's a lot of interest in maintaining the status quo and preventing any level of radical honesty. Because people like things that are convenient and they like things that are easily accessible and cheap. And that's what we have right now and just go to the mall and knock yourself, right? And to have this conversation is to tell people like, hold on a second, you know, you might want to know that all these other things are happening. Some people are going to be very Resistant, because to know that requires them to then have to consider their choices. And that's uncomfortable. You know, that is like, you know, you're asking a lot of somebody to do that. And yet here we are in the situation we're in with global climate change and all of that. There's never been a more urgent or better time, nor a more receptive global audience to these ideas. So yes, this conversation is overdue. And we're dealing with a capitalist system that's very entrenched in a certain level of status quo. They like it the way that it is. They don't want people to know that the jeans that they're wearing have, you know, a bazillion downstream, you know, negative implications, not just for the humans that are wearing them, but for the workers that are manufacturing them and for everything that like, you know, ends up in the water table as a result of the dyes and the runoffs and the microplastics, etc. It's quite shocking to hear all of that. It is a matrix situation and it's a lot like it's overload. Like if you sat down and read this book from beginning to end, your head would explode. Right. So like, how do you even, you know, begin? I mean, I guess before we go any further, maybe like, give me your definition of what a fatal convenience is. We're like 40 minutes in and we haven't even like defined what we're talking about here. But I think people get it, but go ahead.
- [50:10]
Darren Olien
Yeah, well, you know, a fatal convenience is you're doing something. I can easily grab this wall, this water and drink it. It's convenient. Many places around the world can turn on, don't have access to clean water. So that's a convenience. The fatal side of it comes in. Here's that nasty PFAS that shows up again. Here's the nitrates that come by the runoff of the glyphosates and the fertilizers and everything else. The microplastics are now showing up in the waterways. So it's things that you're doing, living your modern day life and not realizing, have kind of a punch to your system, your life, that you're not realizing. You have people having more and more depressive disorders, more and more endometriosis for women, like the list, cancers, all of these things. Cardiovascular, linked to some of these perfumes and things like that. So we can naively move forward. But our biology, our chemistry, our being is being affected by these things every day, all day. And so to pretend sure. It's shocking to people. And I think the biggest thing is it starts to rewrite your idea of reality. Because if you start to really grok what we said earlier about. Wait, what? That they can just put this stuff out on the market and aren't really responsible unless there's an overwhelming response, then we'll step in, hang that has to. Many people don't get that. Many people in the world don't realize that this is an experiment. And they're putting 60 to 80,000 chemicals in our environment every year. And of that, only about 1500 are tested. And just individually tested, none, zero, zilch are tested as they interact with themselves or us. So it's. It's an impossibility for, in some cases, to find one smoking gun. Right. In another instance, to really get your head around all of this exposure. Exposure. And then so you go, wow, not all products, most of which in the personal care space and beauty, space and clothing, actually have very dangerous consequences. And it's not that you're putting on the pair of blue jeans and it's killing you tomorrow. It's this accumulative body burden. Right.
- [53:14]
Rich Roll
So the rebuttal argument to all of these chemicals and all of these products that billions of people are using every single day is that they are being delivered in such a micro doses as to be, you know, at. To be, you know, neutral and not harmful. Like, they're. They're benign, they're inert because it's so tiny. So the response to that is twofold. On the one hand, it's what you just stated, this idea of allostatic load, like over the course of your lifetime. Yeah, but you know. Yeah, like in this one laundry detergent or in this bar of soap or whatever, it. It's so microscopic. You don't have to worry about it. But you wash your hair, you really soap. You do. Then you eat the cheeseburger for lunch, and then you have the monster energy drink, and then you put on your blue jean. You're basically just constantly impulsing your body through hundreds, if not thousands of different chemical inputs every single day. So there's that load over time because a lot of these chemicals have a short half life compared to the forever chemicals, the pfas. Right. So there's a conversation around that. And then second to that is. And I found this very interesting, I learned a lot about this in your book is it ignores the infinite complexity and interplay of all of these different chemicals interacting with each other, which makes it impossible to study or Evaluate because you don't know what the chemical from your monster energy drink is going, what that is going to do when it interacts with the glyphosate that found its way into your system because of the factory farmed whatever that you ate.
- [55:04]
Darren Olien
Yeah, and that's where it gets just completely crazy. Right? And so you talk about these half lives. So you've got like things like BPA and phthalates, which, which have sometimes just a few hours or maybe, maybe a day or so. And then that, that's where. Well, it's fine, right? It's fine. There was some studies on it, but that's not the real world. When you actually look at the studies showing real world. Like the. One of the shockers was oxy benzone, benzoin, which is in most of the sunscreens. Like, yeah, they studied it like, oh, small enough doses. But how it's applied and what shows up in the blood was somewhere between 500 times more. So it's in the real world is massively different. So these people, if they do do studies, it's so limited and not realistic and, and like I said, none of them are the interaction. So, okay, you woke up, you went in a shower. It wasn't filtered. Okay. So you've got microplastics, PFAs, you know, volatile organic compounds, VOC, all while you're showering, right? You're using a body wash, using a shampoo, using a conditioner, all of that, parabens, phthalates, fragrances. Right? Then you're getting out of the shower and you're putting on a lotion. Right?
- [56:35]
Rich Roll
Right. Well, first of all, you're drying off with a towel that is what, you know, like has all these dyes on it.
- [56:40]
Darren Olien
Right? So that's full again.
- [56:42]
Rich Roll
You can literally, you've been awake for five minutes.
- [56:45]
Darren Olien
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And then maybe had a glass of water that you didn't filter or whatever it is. And then. Yeah, so now you're so. Exposure, exposure, exposure, exposure. Then you're putting on your mascara and your makeup and your. God forbid you ever use regular perfume after reading this book again. There's great, again there's amazing choices. Essential oils and things that are frankly sense in myrrh.
- [57:18]
Rich Roll
Gotta get like biblical.
- [57:20]
Darren Olien
Yeah, I mean, like, I mean, come on. Rose and lavender and like there's just a great companies that. And it's also gifting to other people around you. So the point is that, okay, some of those half lives of the parabens and the phthalates and maybe even the Fragrances are a few hours, but you're also re infecting yourself all throughout the day, right. And then you're putting on your deodorants and the ammonium salts are interacting and proving through carcinogenic activity of. Of binding to the. And clogging up the pores and creating all kinds of xeno activity. So, you know, all of these things, it's that again, that overall body burden, the accumulation and that's where, you know, just looking at it all these are. Just think of them as stressors. Stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, stress on a cellular deep level. And you know, I think the job is the intention is to slowly kind of from the inside out, you know, opening your mouth, extremely vulnerable to the world. Right. So choose wisely. You know, what are you drinking? What is it interacting with? What are you eating? What is it interacting with? So what do you, you know, the water, the, you know, cans, aluminum, chelating, heavy metals, what's in my food, all of that stuff. And then work your way out from there. Okay, what's going on my skin? Because there's a lot of transdermal activity of these chemicals and they're going into your skin. I just did. It wasn't even the book. I just did a fatal convenience because I do these on my podcast all the time. I just did one on the shaving strips. Scared the shit out of me. And I was like, I suspect something with these. And again, there's monoethylenes in there, which are endocrine disrupting. There's other ammonium salts in there. Think about it.
- [59:28]
Rich Roll
Like the glue for stripping hair off your face or your legs or whatever.
- [59:33]
Darren Olien
Oh my God, all of that stuff. So shaving with the strip. So that's what I mean, the shave, the strip on that lubricating shaving.
- [59:42]
Rich Roll
Oh, on the actual. I see what you're saying.
- [59:45]
Darren Olien
Yeah.
- [59:46]
Rich Roll
On the razor itself.
- [59:47]
Darren Olien
Yeah. And what a convenience. No shave, burns, blah, blah, blah. But then again, you're shaving and you're also micro cutting. So all those chemicals are basically just going right into your bloodstream. So.
- [60:00]
Rich Roll
Yeah, I would have never thought of that.
- [60:02]
Darren Olien
Yeah. And this is what I mean. Like the apathy, because we're born into this, right? And it's all around us the apathy that we have come accustomed to that we stop thinking my whole.
- [60:14]
Rich Roll
But that burden shouldn't be on us. Like, it's not that we're apathetic. Like, are we supposed to go, I wonder if that strip on my thing is gonna harm me? Like, we shouldn't have to go down the rabbit hole that you went down to figure out whether that's safe or not.
- [60:27]
Darren Olien
I know, that's what I mean. I wish I never had to write this book. I do. You know, I have a busy life. I've got a lot to do. You know, I took two weekends off in two years because every weekend it was less distracting and I spent just a huge amount of time on the everyday, all day Saturday, Sunday, man, I have a lot to do. But it's like when you read, when you learn, the matrix just keeps going, man. And it just like. And you know those things where it's like with awareness and knowledge become, you know, you have greater responsibility as a result. And being that it was very close to home, watching my father suffer my whole like, like it's a little, you know, I see life in fatal conveniences now. You know, the greatest kind of inspiration for learning about fatal conveniences is leaving my environment.
- [61:41]
Rich Roll
Yeah. Where you control every minute, minute detail.
- [61:45]
Darren Olien
And I just go out going, oh my God, people still use that. Like I went home, I saw my mom still using Vaseline on her face. Right. That's just straight up petroleum wiping on her face for less. 50 years. Right. And so I see this stuff happening and I, I can't help myself but to go up, you know, I'm always texting my team like, okay, this one's next for the fatal convenience. This one's next. And you know, that's, that's the job at this point. It's just that, you know, the, the book is a conversation starter about a lot of things I could have, that could have been a volume series of 20, all based in fatal conveniences. So my hope is that people can just open it up. Obviously I want them to read it all the way through to get the context of everything. Because we, we dedicated certain parts of the book, certainly PFAs, EMFs. You're setting things up going, okay, this is what's. Have personal care, you know, all of these things you're setting up so that people have a good understand understanding of what you're then going to give them specific examples to so that they can go, oh my God, here it is again.
- [63:00]
Rich Roll
Yeah. Before you go and buy a mattress or buy bed sheets or laundry detergent, maybe just find the pages in the book and refer to that first. Because a lot of the stuff we sort of know, whether we know processed foods, factory farming, these things are things that we should avoid. There's some of the, you know, kind of more obvious stuff but there's a lot of things in here that are, that are non obvious. Like I think mattresses is, you know, would, would be in that category or you know, a discussion around off gassing or, you know, some of the really what we think are just completely mundane products that we use to wash our hands or our clothes.
- [63:41]
Darren Olien
Totally, yeah. And you know, the. Again, it's this invisible world that I'm trying to make more visible.
- [63:48]
Rich Roll
On top of that, you talked about the oneness of our own personal ecosystems and the greater ecosystem of the planet. There's of course, the sort of chemical inputs of these products, whether they're food, clothing, personal care, cleaning products, et cetera, on our bodies, in our bodies, what that is doing to us. But then of course, as you kind of the nesting egg expands outward, you're like, well, the packaging that it's coming in, or even if the packaging doesn't seem particularly malevolent, what's the liner inside the package, the paper packaging? You know, what does that look like? And where did that come from? And how is that made? And is that coming into contact with me? And then there's the manufacturing process itself. Like, how are these things being made? What are the things that, what are the inputs that are creating this? What is the carbon footprint of all of those inputs aggregated and what is the runoff? Like what's happening to our water table? Where are all the chemicals ending up on the planet? Like, how are we processing the waste, et cetera. We know this with, for example, pig farming and all the refuse and how that gets turned into fertilizer and gets sprayed into the air and people have respiratory diseases and all the like. But it's really not that different with any number of these other industries, you know, particularly clothing, fast fashion and, you know, we're really asleep at the wheel when it comes to that.
- [65:23]
Darren Olien
That was a sleeper for me when I really started looking at, oh my God, that's a big problem. Like it's the number two biggest polluter on the planet. You don't kind of, you can't get your head around because it's easy to demonize a water bottle because it's, it's floating out in the river in the ocean. And then you go, okay, you can get your head around it's going to break down. And microplastics. Well, most of the clothes are woven with petroleum and plastics and plasticizers and formaldehydes and things like that. And that tightly formed shirt and T shirt that you love so much, the elastic jeans.
- [66:01]
Rich Roll
Yeah. Anything that like stretches a little bit.
- [66:04]
Darren Olien
Yeah, big problem. And people are, you know, women are going to be like, yeah, that lycra not a good thing, right. So that lycra is a petroleum based endocrine disrupting. And now that, now you're sweating in it, you're using it, it's close to your private parts, these things that's constant inoculation of these chemicals. And you think like one of great example is the iconics which are a T shirt and blue jeans. And some of the shock came by the not only the, the thousands of liters of water. There's one that I couldn't verify, but I'm just going to throw it out there for shock value. But I was trying to verify was one report said that it was about 2, 22500 liters of water from input of growing the cotton to creating one T shirt. Now I dug into that a little more. It's hundreds of liters without a doubt per T shirt. But you have 8,000, you heard that right? 8,000 chemicals that are there to create a T shirt. 8,000 different chemicals. So you've got the chemicals and glyphosate, astrazene, huge spraying, one of the biggest polluters and uses of those pesticides on your non organic clothing T shirt. Right. So now you're starting already there and then they're blasting, you know, before they write, they blast. Now it's a technique now they blast with more. Right before picking, they blast with more. And then that goes to the stripping and the spinning and all of that stuff. So those 8,000 chemicals are now what makes that T shirt. Not to mention if you have any print on that, it's full of these things called azo dyes that are not only volatile organic compounds connected to cancer and things like that. So that's a T shirt, man. Like that's fucked up.
- [68:38]
Rich Roll
But what do you say to the person who's like, I hear you man, but aren't you a little bit chicken little here? I've been wearing t shirts for 50 years. Like I feel pretty good, I'm fine, I don't have cancer. Like what do you say to that person?
- [68:51]
Darren Olien
Well, that's the thing.
- [68:52]
Rich Roll
You're an alarmist.
- [68:53]
Darren Olien
Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, that's a great question. Like I'm not saying that T shirt put that T shirt on today. I'm not saying it kills you tomorrow. I'm saying that T shirt be aware of how it was created, all of the things that are definitely in that shirt and it's again, this growing body burden of all of this stuff, now it's connected to the destruction of the environment. We can prove that upside down and sideways, it's more of that chemical burden that's being put on you. So I say not even getting into the, the horrible conditions of fast fashion. Right, right.
- [69:44]
Rich Roll
It's a human rights issue.
- [69:45]
Darren Olien
Human rights issue. The slavery that basically happens in order for you to get that cheap T shirt. What I would like to say is that if you can resist getting insecure that you don't have enough clothes and maybe double down on, you know, one new T shirt every year, and if you can use organic and not sprayed in formaldehydes and phthalates and things like that, anything. So is that shampoo killing you? Is that lotion killing you tomorrow? No, but it's setting the stage for you to wake up one day and really have an issue. And the buildup of these chemicals, we, we are starting to see it. We see it in these numbers. So we see it in the plummeting of testosterone. We're seeing it in, like I said, the reproductive issues of women, infertilities of men, the motility, the activity of sperm is, is plummeting. Dr. Leo Tresande has a great book on endocrine disruptor. I think it's called Sicker, Fatter, Poorer. He dives deep. I've had him on my podcast. He dives deep in the endocrine disruption. He's got a lot of great numbers on that. But we're sprinting towards our own demise. Like literally the most primal aspect of us as humans, to keep life moving, we are neutering ourselves with all of these things. Right. It has been shown, even with children and diapers, having the plastic throwaway diapers, that those kids have higher amounts of phthalates and endocrine disrupting and they, and they don't have a choice. So my whole thing is, then why don't we go back to get those parents organic, reusable, washable diapers and just eliminate part of that exposure?
- [71:52]
Rich Roll
Yeah, the, the diapers thing was a trip. I mean, when you imagine, you know, a newborn, a pristine newborn, and then you're immediately, you know, placing on this brand new human skin a product that I think you said they found glyphosate in, in disposable diapers, formaldehyde, dbp, de, hp, hormone disruptors, like all this, like, it's insane.
- [72:17]
Darren Olien
Yeah. And that's where it's. Yeah. And like, what that's going on in the world that that can be sold. And listen, if I had a wand and I could let every mama bear who loves their kids, obviously and, and has instinct to pull cars off their kids, right? Want to protect, want their kids to thrive, want them to be healthy. And then you go, they didn't know, they weren't informed at all about these convenience that keep being sold to them. Oh, it's easier, it's convenient, it's da da da da da, Pampers this and da da da da. So if they knew that, so let's flip on the switch of mama bears to realize that the exposures that are coming, not only the food, the talc that got alarmed, the formula, yeah, the formula, the heavy metals, all of these things, the exposure. And like again we go to. How is this possible? I don't know, man. I don't know. But you and I have to continue to talk about it. And I hope that people can just continue to learn and expand and become their regulatory body of their body. That's what it comes down to.
- [73:50]
Rich Roll
You can't outsource these decisions to governmental bodies that you're relying upon for solid information. Like that's really the kind of drum that you're banging throughout this book. Like, you gotta shoulder that responsibility for yourself. This is very much a message around, you know, the grassroots movement and the power of community, the power of the individual to not just have these conversations to make better choices and to, you know, cultivate community around this so that change can come from the bottom up. We can't sit around and just wait for Washington to deal with it. I had, I had Senator Cory Booker on the podcast recently and one of the things that he says all the time is change. Change doesn't come from Washington, it comes to Washington. Right. Like Washington responds to these sorts of movements. So that's an added kind of responsibility to shoulder as a conscious citizen.
- [74:49]
Darren Olien
Totally right.
- [74:50]
Rich Roll
And if enough people get together and make their voices heard, there will be, you know, a response on Capitol Hill. But to sit on our hands and just wait for that to happen, it's not going to happen. And when you kind of, you know, when your eyes are open and you look around and you realize we can't even solve the real low hanging fruit problems. Like why do we have single use plastics? Like why is water allowed to be in a plastic bottle anymore? Like it should be, it should be. That should be against the law. Like I think most people would agree on that. These are not partisan issues by any stretch of the imagination. And yet we'll get all excited about straws for a minute or we get distracted by the wrong thing. When we have these real big problems, it's not like we don't have solutions to these problems. That's the other thing too. And your very robust appendix and all the resources make clear this doesn't. You don't have to be like Darren and like live in the woods and, you know, in a yurt or whatever. Like, you can still. You don't have to be a Luddite. Like, you can live in the world and you don't have to be really all that convenienced at all. You can just make some better choices.
- [76:03]
Darren Olien
Yeah, and that's, that's where I. I'm optimistic. Number one, I want people to live a freaking great life. I want them to. I mean, ultimately, the. The genesis of super life, the genesis of this is, hey man, let's be aware so that you can actually live a dream that you want to have and be in this world. And that's really where it comes from. And so we just have to face some of this stuff, be our own advocacy, and flip on that switch of common sense again that I guess maybe that's jumping a step because we just first need to become aware of the system that's not in our best interest. But I am optimistic every week, and I'm not even being dramatic. Every week I'm talking to an organization, a company that's doing something better, right. If it's. We talked a little bit before we started about like the MyCoWorks company and the Mycelium leather stuff and that, you know, people realize, like, leather has pfas on it, right? Because it does. You know, that's slippery stuff too. So it's like all of these things are so affected, but there's great people doing great things, and even in great companies, they're trying to do good things.
- [77:21]
Rich Roll
No, there's. There's tons of really cool innovation. So I would agree with you on that front. Throughout my journey, I've learned that transformation isn't about age. It's about perspective. It's about having the courage to question the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, what we're capable of or not, and the possibilities for our lives that lie ahead. And the guy who really gets this is my friend Chip Conley. I adore Chip. He's been on the show a bunch and he's got this great new book out hot off the press called the Midlife Manifesto, which explores quite powerfully this very idea that frames this multi decade period of life midlife, not as a predetermined narrative of aging, not as settling down, but instead as this canvas of unprecedented potential, a time to paint it with adventure, with purpose and profound reinvention. But it's not just philosophical, it's an actionable roadmap with 24 propositions that challenge everything you thought you knew about this stage of life. So for anyone to feeling that subtle but powerful pull towards something more meaningful, more authentic, I think this book is for you. And the best part. Check this out. You can get your copy free. All you got to do is cover the shipping.
- [78:42]
Darren Olien
Who does that?
- [78:43]
Rich Roll
That is insane. He's literally gifting you this incredible book. Head on over to meawisdom.com manifesto to check it out and claim your copy today. It's an amazing deal. Free can't do better than that. That's meawisdom.com manifesto I've been banging the drum about recovery for years now, and after all of my endurance escapades, I've learned the hard way that how well you bounce back is really just as important as how hard you push. Because if you don't recover, you don't improve. That's why the brand new and all new Whoop sensor is my constant companion and it's seriously impressive. 7% smaller with a ridiculous 14 plus days of battery life. I haven't taken my WHOOP off my wrist in something like five and a half years at this point, and I love it because it's the only wearable that turns your health and fitness data into personalized guidance. All those metrics matter. Sleep quality, hrv, resting, heart rate, strength, stress, strain and WHOOP tracks them constantly and then actually tells you what to do with that information. Should I go hard today or should I take it easy? Well, Whoop knows and the new Heart Screener feature with on demand ECG readings is just a game changer because it allows you to check in on your heart whenever you want to and share those results with your doctor, which is pretty powerful stuff. Their health span feature shows you how your daily habits are influencing your biological age, and the hormonal insights provide personalized guidance throughout your cycle or pregnancy. Whoop is not just another gadget, it's really the only wearable that gives you a truly comprehensive view of your body, helping you to make smarter decisions about when to push and when to rest. So check it out. Go to join.whoop.com roll that's join WH I think an added ripple of complexity to all of this that began as something well Intentioned, but now has become almost a smokescreen. Is the whole labeling thing right? Like, now there's all these labels on all these products and we don't really know, like, is this, what does this mean? Like, is this mean anything or was this bought and paid for? Like, I don't know which labels are important, which ones are just greenwashing. So maybe we can have just a conversation, you know, initially just broadly about what is greenwashing, what is the extent of greenwashing? And, you know, how can we as, as, you know, conscious consumers who do want to make the right choice, you know, how do we, how do we kind of interface with all the marketing and stuff that's on the, you know, the packaging of the products that we're looking to buy?
- [81:40]
Darren Olien
Yeah, it's a good one. I mean, greenwashing only came about because of the lexicon that's moving towards, hey, man, I want to, I want to have a better choice. A normal person. There was a great study. Normal person doesn't actually want to drink out of a water bottle of plastic. They just don't have another choice. You know, if you go on an airline, you just, you're dealing with it. So the lexicon of the people, the population of people do have this awareness. They just don't have many choices. So what happens is these big organizations doesn't even have to be big take this kind of atmosphere and they start labeling things that are misleading and, and misleading without the proper backing of what they're actually saying or they're saying natural. It's a classic one that has no backing of what that means.
- [82:39]
Rich Roll
Plus all natural.
- [82:41]
Darren Olien
Yeah, yeah.
- [82:41]
Rich Roll
Or they just put it in a green. They just, the packaging is green picture. Just put it. Yeah. Like you have a couple different varieties of the same product. One is, one is green. I'm just going to take that. That one's probably better. I'm going to get that one.
- [82:54]
Darren Olien
Yeah, it's green. It's got a great picture. And it says this is a natural scent. Well, you know, having 15 years, 20 years in the supplement world, I knew that there was a problem even then in the, in the flavoring world. This is natural flavor. But then the FDA had all these loopholes to have other flow agents things in there. So it's the same that exists in these kind of other areas and fragrances in the sense that, okay, you have natural scent in this example, but then you have trade secrets that could have hundreds of chemicals that are not on any label. And the phraseology you're using is just misleading the people towards this. All you did is not change any formula. You didn't make it better. You didn't make it safe. You didn't prove that it's safe. You didn't prove that it was actually naturally safe. But you just put a beautiful picture on it. You called it something, and now you're taking the movement that actually does want to make that innately. We do want to make good choices. We don't knowingly want to hurt our kid by making a choice of a scented candle that's got VOCs all over it, but they're calling it natural scent, you know, so all of these things, they're taking advantage of an impossible group, large population of people that are not doing the incredible research that it would take to unpack what. What that actually means in that natural sense. And that's not okay. It's not okay at all. It would be benign if these things were benign, but they're not benign. They are hijacking our systems. They are affecting us neurologically. Carcinogenic endocrine disrupting testicular cancers, endometriosis. The list continues. And it grows at this mounting kind of loop. So the greenwashing is knowingly. And this is where it comes in. The companies are knowingly misleading people.
- [85:22]
Rich Roll
Yeah. That's what makes it so malevolent. Right. I mean, they're leveraging language and loopholes to delude the consumer into this senseless. That they're making a good choice for themselves when, in fact, it's business as usual. And we see this in the animal food industry with words or phrases like cage free or free range and all of that. And it makes you think, oh, cage free. Yeah, of course. But you don't actually know what that means. And the real language that polices what's acceptable and what's not, I think would be shocking to a lot of people. And it just drives a lot of. Apathy is the wrong word. But I think it lulls people into a sense that they are participating in the solution, when in fact, they're not. And that's what makes it particularly dark, I think. And, you know, I don't know if evil's the right word, but, like, you know, not great. Right. And so for the person who. But there are some labels that are good, right? Like if it's ewg, whatever, certified. Like, there's so, like, if somebody's going to the store and they're like, okay, now there's like, 10 different little certifications on every product that is even in the range of being like, oh, this is like a, you know, like a natural, organic, conscious, non gmo, whatever. What are the labels that are actually legit that people should look for? And what are the ones that are bullshit and misleading?
- [86:51]
Darren Olien
Well, some of the ones that are misleading is recyclable. Like, so you could put recyclable on a packaging. Like, here's the product, it's in a package. Recyclable. And you're like, great, maybe it was a shower curtain. All of it was made out of plastic. What's recyclable? Is it the packaging that's recyclable? Is the rings of the shower curtain? Recyclable is the vinyl weird thing that you're putting. Is that recyclable? You don't know. And most of it probably isn't. And then just going off on a tangent for a second on recycling, because you're again, you're wanting to do it. You separate your things and being a good person, I'm recycling, I'm going to the effort. But now new reports even show it's even worse. Only 5% of whatever you think you're recycling is recycled in any storm. So we failed miserably. So that's like saying, take your little blue bin, dump out 95% of it. And that 95% is. And I say this in the book is there's no, let me say it this way. There's no, away, take my recycling away. Go recycle it. There virtually is none. Virtually non existent. Only 5%.
- [88:22]
Rich Roll
Right. When you put your refuse in the recycling bin and it comes and it gets picked up by the garbage truck, what is that? Yeah, like a very small fraction of that 5%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is really disheartening.
- [88:36]
Darren Olien
So dump out 95% and stare at it and going, could I maybe be a little better at not consuming so much? That is using plastic or whatever. Or whatever kind of garbage it is that we think. And most of it, it's so layered. The sophistication at recycling centers, they can't unravel. Hell, most people don't even know that there's a plastic liner in Starbucks coffee. And I'm not picking on Starbucks, but there's a plastic liner in that. What you think is a cardboard.
- [89:09]
Rich Roll
Oh, they're, they're, they're paper cups.
- [89:11]
Darren Olien
Yeah, they're paper cups. So they say, hey, use a paper cup. It's not, it's plastic liner in it. So you can't recycle it. Right. You think you're throwing at the cardboard, but. And you can't recycle it because there's no ability for most of the recycling centers to break that apart and to like put it back in the cardboard circulation, put it back in the plastic. So all of these things are infinitely complex. So even saying those words don't mean much, but it's still a greenwashing if you're negligent on what you actually mean. Right. So, you know, and there's. I'm not even going to name the company, but there is because it would cause me a lot of problems with people I know. There was one company that's like, hey, yeah, recyclable. And then you gotta, you gotta, you eat this thing, this bar, and then you send it back to the company and like who's going to do that?
- [90:11]
Rich Roll
Right? And you're just take the packaging and mail it back to them.
- [90:15]
Darren Olien
Yeah, okay. Yeah, right. Okay, now you're going to. So again you use that as a marketing spin. But the percentage of people actually doing that is a few percent. Right. If at all. So yeah, it's a. I forgot the second party question.
- [90:32]
Rich Roll
I mean the main question. Like, and so what are the labels that are valid and can, can you know, give us confidence that we are making a good choice?
- [90:42]
Darren Olien
It's a good one. Yeah, I mean it's a good one.
- [90:44]
Rich Roll
This came up in, in Sea Spiracy. Do you remember like the labeling on, on fish and all of that and how corrupt it was and it's basically a pay to play thing.
- [90:52]
Darren Olien
Yeah, yeah. So like the, the dolphin free was definitely not at all. Basically.
- [90:58]
Rich Roll
Dolphin safe. Yeah, dolphin safe Tuna, right?
- [91:01]
Darren Olien
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, you know, from, you know, starting from like maybe food from a low residue pesticide perspective, you can go all the way back to pick number nine on the little sticker on Whole Food. Four and three is indicating pesticides and GMOs and stuff like that. So if there's no sign, you can look at the little sticker stickers that are on the. So you don't pick nine. So that's not even, that's just a part of the. They're categorizing for the grocery store so you can hack your way and to know at least what that is. There's the Environmental Working Group has a great list of the dirty dozen. If you, if you don't have access or can't afford organic, then you want to wash the exposed vegetables and fruit. Like, you know, things like pears, strawberries, peaches, cucumbers, like those kind of things. You want to wash really well and you can eliminate a lot of the residues that way. But you don't want to just eat those straight away. Yeah. And then of course, organic, like you want to choose that. I would still wash those foods. And then you all go all if you want to keep going. Farmers markets, know your farmer, how you growing it, ask them questions, get to know them, and then, you know, grow your own food. You know, let's bring back that piece because that could help, you know, a variety of things. Food security clearly could help out a lot. And you know, we have, you know, in the late 1800s, 90% of the. Of Americans were using their land as their food. Right. And now, now 2%. Right. Of, of the farmers or the people in the country are making all of our food. So that's a whole rabbit hole of the agricultural side. So get to know your food. Grow as much as you can.
- [93:24]
Rich Roll
But unlike the like, like for personal care products or cleaning products, is there any kind of responsible labeling going on in, you know, other kind of consumer product sectors?
- [93:37]
Darren Olien
Yeah, I mean, you can, I mean, the best thing is to first indication is what kind of packaging they're using because you can also see the kind of the scope of what the company is trying to do. If they're just standard plastic, then okay, but I would turn it over. You know, it's that whole thing of like, if you can understand what you're especially like personal care and lotions and things like that. If they don't have, you know, phthalates. Well, you don't know they have phthalates, but if they're in plastic containers, they probably have phthalates in. Because the phthalates are the plasticizers that make plastic malleable.
- [94:20]
Rich Roll
Right.
- [94:22]
Darren Olien
So I think the best thing to do is make sure when they're, if they're saying parfum or, or. Or fragrance, and they're not proudly disclosing what that is for them. And it's like this is lavender, this is rose essential oil. Then I would run like, for sure you're going to be getting a cocktail. So though. And fragrances are something to become aware of because they're, they're almost in every beauty product, personal care. So if a company is proudly saying what their fragrance is, then that's a probably a good indicator of a natural kind of rest of the formula. And, and then you want to look for, you know, whole things that you can.
- [95:18]
Rich Roll
Yeah.
- [95:18]
Darren Olien
You know, pronounce. Yeah, yeah. And understand.
- [95:20]
Rich Roll
Yeah. The common sense aspect of it. I was just Wondering whether there's like some kind of, you know, Cha Ching thing, like, right on the path. Oh, I know. Okay. But if there's not, like, yes campaign.
- [95:30]
Darren Olien
For safe cosmetics, I don't know if they have a symbol. EWG does. They do great work. I was still kind of playing with the idea of doing a marketplace with a kind of verifiable vetting process. I'm actually pretty serious about it. I'm poking around and what that would actually look like. It's massive undertaking. But again, having to create something that you thought was already created by governments and the regulations, and you go, well, okay, so.
- [96:11]
Rich Roll
Mm.
- [96:11]
Darren Olien
We as the people have to create it.
- [96:14]
Rich Roll
Yeah. I feel like that should be the case in clothing too. Like, who's ever thought of putting a label on clothing about how it was, you know, it's like. Like we don't even think about that. But if you watch the True Cost and, you know, Livia Firth. Right. Like leading the charge and, you know, trying to, you know, bring us into reality on what's going on there, like, there's a lot of work that could be done that seems easy and for some reason, you know, just. It just takes a tremendous amount of effort to like. It's a Sisyphean task. Right. Of pushing this boulder up the hill.
- [96:50]
Darren Olien
Yeah. Because it's a. You know, we're. Again, we're given a system having in it upon birth and to now go about it. You know, again, we. Paul Hawken drawdown that first book when he really spent the time realizing, if you invest in it, man, it's gonna not only pay your bottom line, but it's gonna pay the bottom line of being literally regenerative along the way.
- [97:20]
Rich Roll
It's in your financial interest to get on board with this. And then his more recent book is just all Solutions. Look at all the stuff that actually already exists right now that we could be doing if we just focused on it a little bit better.
- [97:34]
Darren Olien
And that's why we need just strong, bold people, business owners, entrepreneurial people. That there is more and more capital that's being kind of a swell is definitely coming. But we need strong people to continue to open up this lane so that we can celebrate these solutions. I mean, you know, I'm not going to say what the project is necessarily, but working on a different television show. And it's. It's all based in celebrating the solution of some of these things that again, highlight what is going. Because I. I think that within all of this, even if everyone skipped the book and went to the last third of the book. Right. And just went to like, okay, well, what's better?
- [98:22]
Rich Roll
Product. Just tell me what to do.
- [98:24]
Darren Olien
Tell me what to do. Well, it's there, right? At least. Again, that's.
- [98:27]
Rich Roll
Yeah. I like how it all starts with a Di. Each one of the sections, though, starts with a diy. Like, make your own. Here's how you make your own, whatever it is. And then, hey, if you don't want to do that, here's five products that are pretty good.
- [98:38]
Darren Olien
Yeah. Like baking soda, hydrogen peroxide. These things are great to clean your vegetables. And the. You know.
- [98:45]
Rich Roll
Yeah.
- [98:45]
Darren Olien
It's super, super easy. And again, we. We've become delusioned to think that we need to buy this special product that the TELL A Vision told us to adopt. When it's like, clean your house with some white vinegar and some water and put some essential oil in it. Now it's gifting to your life and your family and your health.
- [99:13]
Rich Roll
Yeah. And I think it's important to also point out that. To your point at the outset of this conversation, that these. These issues are extremely complex. And it's not about good guys and bad guys or corporations being evil. There is a lot of really interesting innovation in the kind of startup space, but there's also some really valid and interesting sustainability programs in the Fortune 500 space. Like, Walmart is doing interesting things. I know that you have a relationship with Visa and. And they're trying to really be a leader in that space. And I was reminded of this episode of Malcolm Gladwell's podcast, Revisionist History. And I don't know if this was sponcon or something, but he did an interview. He spent a day at Procter and Gamble with some scientist who worked for On Tide or whatever, their laundry detergent. And he was trying to, like, revise our assumptions around chemicals in cleaning products being bad by illustrating that this guy had come up with a new formula for laundry detergent that I'm sure had all kinds of chemicals in it. But the big thing in that space is, can you get stains out? Can you clean the clothes in cold water? And through his innovation, realized that his formula would reduce people's reliance on having to use hot water to clean their clothes. So even though it has chemicals in it, there is an environmental argument to support the viability of such a product, which speaks to the complexity. And I don't know if this is true or not, but that's why it's complicated. Yes, you use these natural soaps and all that, but you end up having to Use, use more hot water because they don't actually work, you know, or you have to use twice as much of whatever product because it's just, even though it's not made with all of these things, it just doesn't quite do the job like the fatal convenience does.
- [101:21]
Darren Olien
Yeah. And you pull the string on that, like, okay, well what's the big deal? It's hot water. Well, how did it become hot? Like there was a power input to create that hot water. Right.
- [101:31]
Rich Roll
So you're. Yeah, like by using hot water, more hot water with your natural soap, you may in fact be unwittingly making the environmental problem worse, not better.
- [101:43]
Darren Olien
Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the amount of hot water, but, but, but, but that is a good example of. It's just like, let's look at this stuff. Clearly minimizing chemical exposure. Be like being transparent because overnight if everyone was transparent with what was actually in their products, most of these big companies, they would have to shut that stuff down because it's knowing there's trade secrets and fragrances and things like that. They would have to disclose. It would be make Twitter files look like a little schoolboy, you know, so, you know, this is again, you are buying products, you are using products in your home, in your car and your clothing, on your, on your body, on your children, what you're consuming the water, the thing, and you are getting nailed with these chemicals all the time. And it is, I can be absolutely clear that the accumulative body burden is absolutely affecting your body, some more than others.
- [103:00]
Rich Roll
Yeah, I don't, I don't question you at all on that front. Can we talk about, you know, getting into the complexity of things again? Let's talk about palm oil a little bit. You went deep on palm oil. Palm oil is in lots of things, food, products and other products. And there really is no valid argument to support the continued ingestion of this product, given what it does to the planet.
- [103:34]
Darren Olien
Yeah, I mean, this is just, you know, it goes back to the superfood hunting side of things a bit when you realize the, the massive, you know, work that goes into the production chain of stuff. And out of sight, out of mind for people when you are destroying rainforests and habitats. You know, the symbol of that orangutan. I don't know if I've ever told you this orangutan story.
- [104:10]
Rich Roll
I don't think so.
- [104:10]
Darren Olien
The cell phone story of my orangutan stole it. Maybe I'll save it, but I don't know.
- [104:18]
Rich Roll
Now I Feel like I need to hear that story.
- [104:20]
Darren Olien
Yeah. So, I mean, just to button up palm oil, there's no real benefit to ingesting it. And it is one of those things. Unless you literally are fair traded and you have an organization that can validate the fair trade of that said palm oil, that would be the only reason to use the palm oil. But anyway, it's a funny, funny story with our friend, what's his name, the microbiologist, Compton Rom. Compton Rom.
- [105:00]
Rich Roll
Yeah. I was going to lightly chastise you for not including. Including ascended health in your. In your syllabus of. Of products because he makes amazing.
- [105:10]
Darren Olien
I forgot.
- [105:10]
Rich Roll
Yeah.
- [105:11]
Darren Olien
Kind of all about it. In a sense.
- [105:13]
Rich Roll
His I am beautiful oil is like. I use it every day. I love it. And he's got amazing toothpaste. He's got all kinds of. And they're like. His toothpaste is like a probiotic.
- [105:23]
Darren Olien
Yeah.
- [105:23]
Rich Roll
Like, it's not. Just not bad for you. It's actually benefiting your microbiome by using it.
- [105:29]
Darren Olien
So, Compton, sorry you weren't in the book, but I. Big props to you. Right? Right now, Ascended health.
- [105:35]
Rich Roll
He's the one who originally introduced us.
- [105:38]
Darren Olien
Yeah.
- [105:38]
Rich Roll
Do you remember that?
- [105:38]
Darren Olien
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. So he and I were in Cambodia and we were hunting. He came with because he was like, he was like, I want to get the microbes of what you're. Yeah, like I'm going to get the microbes. You'll get the fruit or the veggie.
- [105:54]
Rich Roll
Or you're the superfood hunter. He's the microbe hunter.
- [105:56]
Darren Olien
Yeah. Yeah.
- [105:57]
Rich Roll
He literally has traveled the world and just, he'll like, talk for hours about the soil of wherever he visited.
- [106:02]
Darren Olien
He goes, get me. And he was in constant. I was in the Philippines. Get me the soil. No, no, no, no, no. It's always interesting when you're coming from the, you know, the customs agent. Have you been in contact with, you know, soil? I'm like, when you fill out the car. No. Livestock. Yeah, livestock. And so, so, so just a quick story, but it's. So we were in Cambodia looking for a bunch of superfoods, and the high level minister of agriculture, there was flooding at the time, so he kept setting up meetings, but then had to leave and jump on a helicopter and blah, blah, blah. So he said, hey, just go to my farm. So I'm like, okay. So gave it directions. We go to this farm, this big gate and kind of what seemed to be a dilapidated zoo. And so we're on his farm with all These, you know, mangosteen and moringa and all of these things. And we're looking around like there's literally caged animals here that were saved from zoos, from who knows where. So Compton is, he goes, I hear him laughing. He goes, come here. And there was an orangutan in a cage. And number one, I hate all animals in cages. It hurts me to my core. But I never saw an orangutan before. So I run over there and no sooner did I pull up my cell phone to take a picture of this guy, this big, seven foot wingspan orangutan. Slapped the cell phone out of my hand. It fell down in between the fence I was behind and the cage. And he grabbed it before I could grab it. And he pulled it in the cage. And so now I'm going, oh my God, he has my cell phone. And I see him, all of the activity in his eyes. And then he was going to bite it. And so I started making noises. I didn't know what to do. Compton's laughing his ass off the entire time because it happened so fast. And so anyway, I cut to a guy, a little worker that was there, went in the cage and he got on the back of this big male orangutan and he was wrestling with it and the cell phone fell. He took it and just fell, flung it out of the cage. I got it. He ran out of the cage and there was another worker that was still in there and it was a little tricky for him to get out. He didn't get hurt. And they saved my cell phone and it was stolen by an in tank.
- [108:48]
Rich Roll
Man in some kind of weird Cambodian tiger king situation. Yeah, I don't know how we got to that.
- [108:57]
Darren Olien
What will be talking about palm oil, right? Orangutans.
- [109:02]
Rich Roll
Yeah. So I mean, palm oil. No bueno.
- [109:05]
Darren Olien
No bueno.
- [109:05]
Rich Roll
Basically, if there is a controversial section in this book, aside from telling people not to eat meat, you're going to, you're going to get some, you're going to get some people pushing back on that. Probably because this is not like a plant based manifesto, you know, I know you and I know where you stand on nutrition. There probably will be some people who are like totally on board and then they get to that and they're like, whoa, hold on a second. We could table that though, because we're talking through that.
- [109:34]
Darren Olien
Yeah, normal eating of meat, you know, that full of chemicals, you know, that growth hormone, antibiotic resistant activity. I actually gave good solutions for people who want to eat meat in that section. So I swallowed my pride and said, hey, I'm under no delusion that everyone's going to go plant based tomorrow. So in that instance you have a section where I've vetted some companies so you can go and have a better choice.
- [110:06]
Rich Roll
Second to that is the section on electromagnetic radiation. So let's spend a couple minutes kind of exploring that. This is really the invisible elephant, the true, truly invisible elephant here. And it's a topic that I admit I don't know very much about. I know that there's a certain kind of conspiracy minded camp that will go to great lengths to make sure that they are in an environment where there is no EMR or whatever, Faraday tents and all the like. So we walk me through like a very basic understanding of what we're talking about here. When we're talking about EMRs, EMFs, WiFi, microwaves, the differences in these various forms of radiation that we expose ourselves to, whether it's through X rays or when we're at the airport going through scanning. What should we truly be concerned about? What is safe, what isn't safe? Because I think in addition to there just not being a lot of education around this, there's a lack of understanding, there is a sense like, yeah, this probably isn't so good, but this is the way we do things and we're just going to have to live with it. And then there's some more kind of radical thoughts around 5G, et cetera. I mean that's a topic that is radioactive in its own right to even talk about because it got co opted during COVID and it made just having any kind of reasonable conversation about it impossible. So let me just, I'm just gonna throw that radioactive isotope over to you and you tell me what's what.
- [111:54]
Darren Olien
Well, the first thing is, without a doubt, it's a perfect fatal convenience. Right. And we absolutely need more studies. Absolutely. There's enough data to show that there's a problem. From my perspective, you know, just brain imaging of a cell phone up to a child's head showing the radiation going all the way through the skull because the, not only the skull thickness, but the immune system as well. So you're really talking about, you know, just, I mean this is infinitely complex, but you're talking about so ionizing radiation. So if there's a spectrum of frequency, ionizing radiation is X rays, radioactive isotopes, uranium. It will rip your DNA apart, electrons, and it will affect you. And epidemiologically it will affect you. Right. That's not what we're Talking about, we're talking about non ionizing. The assumption that sets this up, I think from a bad trajectory is assuming that as long as it's not ionizing, it's safe because we're not seeing it directly ripping apart the DNA. There was a lot of research that was that. And you're right, it gets so wacky when it comes to looking at this. It's just like, oh my God, why is it like literally looks like a weird lady talking about Area 51, but when you really start digging. And I, believe me, this was my, probably my longest chapter because I had to get through. I had to reach out to researchers to point me into different directions. The Invisible Rainbow was a good research, good book by a doctor that I could at least go, okay, that's, you know, even starting the look at the history of just electricity. So I had to think about the consumption of information.
- [114:26]
Rich Roll
Let's start with. Yeah, let's start with Edison and light bulbs and go from there.
- [114:31]
Darren Olien
Yeah, but it's important to get, I'll just make it short, but it's important to realize that there was data to show when we put, put up the first telegraph that that was causing harm in migratory patterns. And then as we continued UHF and things like that in the frequency generation and radio frequency, they saw that there was some pretty direct correlations to extincting the red sparrow. And there was even some anecdotal evidence to show that even tracking devices, we're messing with migratory patterns of cats of other mammals and things like that. So every time you have electricity, you have also a magnetic field. And we are magnetic, right? So we can easy one is the heartbeat, right. And so diagnostically we know this and we use that so we are sensitive. And just to add another aspect to it, my dad, chemical sensitivity. Twenty years ago I meet a doctor, Dr. Mohsen Hermanish, who he changed kind of the way I looked at nutrition came from sixth generation herb farmers. And then he was a mathematician as well as a master in understanding nutrition on a cellular level. He was the first, he gave me the term fatal convenience. He was the first person 25 years ago to say electrically our DNA is sending signals through the rna, right? And chemically too, but electrically those things are happening. And so the instructions of, of the proteins going to replace maybe senescent cells are a part of the process always. Billions and millions and billions of times a day. And he started pointing 25 years ago. He started pointing me to research to go. This is the electric field of a cell phone is affecting that DNA. And now I was looking at many studies showing that the gylomas, where you'd have a cell phone up to your head was creating these tumor, like, not even like, but these tumors. So then multiple studies showing that. So you're like, okay, well, let's study it some more instead of blowing it off. So these kinds of things started to show up. Now, the other areas, which was weirdly similar to a chemical exposure of a phthalate or something, that it would show radical oxygen species, like free radicals, like the mechanism of cellular metabolism was being thwarted and stressed. And then you would see things that really scared me that I didn't know. And there was one study that showed that this protein, albumin, that is not supposed to be in the brain, showed that by the exposure of a cell phone frequency opened up the blood brain barrier to allow that albumin to show up in the brain, which had a cascade of problems in the brain. So similar to the exposure, I saw stress, I saw free radical oxygen species, I saw stress of the immune system and these things. And then obviously the blood brain barrier, which is a really bad scenario to open up. And those came back in many studies. And my fact checkers checked them again, and I was like, oh, my God, this is like a chemical exposure. And the other part of it was lowering sperm counts. So this exposure of a cell phone, and then you're going, wow, the proximity is an issue here. So the proximity of this device in your head, on your laps, in your pockets, and the workout mama who's putting the cell phone in her sports bra, these are problems, and these are proximal problems. And again, this was. Dude, this was a rabbit hole, right? And I had to conclude I had to stop some of this stuff because I couldn't find. Find enough information. But the history started me on this path. The telecommunication. I'll say it here, I believe that the telecommunications business knows about this stuff. They know about these studies. Something interesting happened. I didn't really talk about it in the book, but in 1993, the EPA, which I think was right in terms of it was their responsibility to study the electromagnetic fields of cell towers and cell phones, that they had their guy study this and found many of the things that I explained to you and said, okay, you guys hired me, we need to tell the consumer. And overnight it was shifted to the FCC and the EPA's funding dried up.
- [120:32]
Rich Roll
So now what year was that? How long ago was that?
- [120:34]
Darren Olien
94.
- [120:35]
Rich Roll
And there's documentation on this?
- [120:37]
Darren Olien
Yeah, I read countless articles. I even read an old Fax. That was this guy's report. So then, so now the FCC holds it. So now The FCC is 20 years behind the technology and they're only basically saying things are safe based on thermal reaction. If it burns you, then it's not safe. They're not taking into the account the frequency waves, the 1, 2, 3G, 4G, 5G, all of these things. And the magnetic fields that come with all of this stuff, they're not including that. They don't even mention any of it when it was showing up in the initial study. So yeah, man, this is crazy that all of this stuff. But the thing that kept coming up over and over again is without a doubt, there's real data to show that a child's immune system is compromised. It is affected, and you are stressed out. You are stressed out. I'm stressed out on a molecular level.
- [121:51]
Rich Roll
Not from what you're looking at on the device, but from the device itself. Yeah, yeah. I mean, do you have a sense of ongoing research and studies that are occurring now around this? Are people like. I guess what I'm saying is, or my thought is, certainly we should be studying this. This is ubiquitous. We all use these things. I know what it's like. I used to, to hold the thing to my ear and if you're on a long phone call, like, not only does it start to get hot there, like it doesn't feel like I start to get a headache. Like I'm like, I know that that's not right. You know, I don't know what's going on, but I don't do that anymore. Right? But I use Bluetooth and I use wifi and you know, we run our studio with tons of electronic equipment and you know, there's all kinds of waves and frequencies pinging around constantly and we just. This is part of what it is to be a modern human being in the developed world. And look, I listened to the radio when I was a kid and I had a TV like you did with the antenna and that's coming through the air and I'm okay, so is there really anything to worry about here? And if you want to talk about 5G, then you might as well put your tinfoil hat on and go talk to David Icke and you guys can chat about the lizard people, right? It's right. Well, but we have to be able to talk. We have to be able to like have a rational, evidence based, science backed conversation about this thing that is in the hands of billions of people all.
- [123:23]
Darren Olien
Over the world, 100%. And you know, unfortunately, through all of that, it got co opted into all these other side conversations about. I just wanted to bring it down to what is it doing? And there's multiple studies showing that it's causing an immune response. The blood brain barrier freaked me out. The lower immune system, that's not kind of up to par yet. As a child, they're much more affected. It is causing stress. And so it definitely needs more studies and it definitely needs the attention that it deserves. And the FCC has to update their understanding. Not even their understanding, but their health measures.
- [124:19]
Rich Roll
Right. I mean, the fcc, sorry to step on your words, but the FCC is, its mandate is to regulate the communications industry. It's not set up to look out for the, you know, the health considerations of, of, you know, what these communications companies are doing. That's, that's the, you know, the Department of Health and the Environmental Protection. There are other organizations that it sounds like, based on what you said, were divested of their authority to kind of police and regulate that. Is that the case?
- [124:52]
Darren Olien
Yeah, it's weird. I mean, I don't know what really happened, but I just know that that that switch happened, that the EPA definitely was studying telecommunications kind of through the funding, I think of the telecommunications companies and then when the researcher, I forget his name off the top of my head. Carlos something. And then he came out with, hey man, this is what I found. And he was wanting to share it and then let's tell everybody. And you know, again, I know this sounds weird, but if I wasn't reading it, I'd be like, what the hell? Like again, what the hell shows up in a lot of these things in the book, like, what the hell is the PFAS doing on my child's diaper? And my, like, why is elastane in my clothes? It's causing me stress. So this one was a massive one. I'm just, I'm worried because obviously, 1, 2, 3, 4G, 5G, they're all here. It doesn't, it's just because we're switching to 5G and it's a little different millimeter wave, it doesn't travel as far. So they have to put up more towers. Yeah. And that means just more electrical pollution. And then on top of it, you know, about 40 to 50,000 satellites, these micro satellites that they want to blanket the earth so that we can quote, unquote, use this facetiously, smartify the world. Hey man, like let's, let's study this stuff. Take a beat. I don't want the electrical pollution of things that I'm seeing strong indicators that we at least let's frickin study it. So again, let's have a conversation. I'm not the expert in it, I don't know, but I've read a huge amount that says this is not clean. There's some dangers present here.
- [127:01]
Rich Roll
There's this Swedish study that you talk about in the book that describes this thing they call the Microwave study syndrome, in which in this study there was a couple living in an apartment that began to suffer from a long list of symptoms like fatigue and they couldn't sleep, nosebleeds, tinnitus, skin problems, dizziness, concentration issues, heart palpitations, all of which decreased or disappeared within a day after they moved to another home with significantly lower radiation. All the conditions they suffered under exposure to 5G radio waves are identical to those first Described more than 50 years ago by people who received whole body microwave radiation. Now is that a study? If it's a couple, like, it's almost anecdotal, like I don't know that you can really extract from that anything all that meaningful from a scientific perspective. But from an anecdotal perspective, like, okay, well that's sort of concerning.
- [128:06]
Darren Olien
Yeah, yeah. And again, you know, I gave those examples simply because it's happening to many people similar to my father. Like two great tech wellness companies. One's literally called Tech Wellness. Another company out of the UK is called Conscious Spaces. Both of those women who started those companies were chemically or were, were electrosensitive. So they started minimizing companies. We're not talking about the famous sticker to put on you, we're talking about blocking devices, we're talking about plugging back in, turning off WI fi, turning off at night. And that's the thing. If people. Like one of the minimal things that you can do is turn off your WI fi at night. Right. That's a stress that you don't need and you're not using. So. And because we go on to talk about the multiple mice studies that start to show up around the blood, brain barrier, the immune response and things like that. So yeah, there's a, anecdotal, there's tons similar to my father.
- [129:13]
Rich Roll
It's a trip, man. Did you think when you were putting this book together, like maybe I should just leave the whole 5G thing out of it for.
- [129:20]
Darren Olien
For sure? Yeah, yeah, but it's, it's, there's too much compelling information to just leave it. You know, it's like, it's, it's the 5G side of it is we are, think about the theme here. We all of these fatal conveniences that we're talking about, they haven't done the proper studies to deem them safe. And there's the, it's the same playbook. They haven't proven that 1G, 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G are completely safe. So I'm just raising my hand going, hey man, before we're blasting us all the time 24, 7 and we don't have a choice. Let's dig into it. Tell me that it's safe. Not just, you know, of course it's safe and you know, no, we need double bind control trials to show me to prove that, please disprove the research studies that I read. Please disprove them. Show me like we need this kind of action and actionable things. And the awareness that I hope everyone starts to understand is there are things that are going on in this world that unfortunately have greater motivations than the health of us and our environment. And we need to hold more accountability for some of these people so that we can again, we have numbers on our side. So let's turn on that common sense and just ask questions, man. Let's ask for these things, things for change and ask these questions so that we can like go, okay, prove to me they're safe and I'm good. So I, in the meantime, I use blocking safe sleeve on it. I use these other companies. I plug back in, by the way, plugging in, it's a lot faster.
- [131:23]
Rich Roll
And yeah, just ethernet it. And you do, you're like, oh, here are some cases you can use and here's some other thing. You know, you can go all the way to the extreme extreme, using the Faraday tent to really block it out and go full Ben Greenfield on the whole thing. But there are very simple fixes that are not that inconvenient 100% which is the case for all the categories throughout the book. So again, in the appendices, all sorts of suggestions, products that you vetted, et cetera. But I think to kind of close this out and bring this to some level of finality for today. There is a sense that I have that one could read this and be like overwhelmed, like, okay, well, like, okay, you don't have. You only have to change one thing, which is basically everything. Like every single product in your house, every appliance that you have, the paint on your walls and the car, you gotta strip out the carpets and throw your mattress out and like get rid of all your clothes, like It's a lot, dude. Right. So if somebody's embarking on this journey and they're like, okay, well, I gotta start somewhere. Like, what are the things that are the most important to address first? Maybe paired with the easiest changes or most convenient changes to make to launch somebody on their own version of your journey?
- [132:42]
Darren Olien
Yeah, great question, Rich. I mean, I think of it in this way. Go in to out. So the vulnerability of opening your mouth and consuming a liquid or water or food. Food. Start there, because there's plenty. So probably the easiest one is filter your water, because we know that that's affecting 98% of many parts of the country in PFAS and microplastics. So filter your water. An RO system distillation. RO is super easy.
- [133:17]
Rich Roll
RO is reversos.
- [133:19]
Darren Olien
Yep. Reverse. Reverse osmosis. And again, like I've said many times before, add some unrefined salt. And also, not all Himalayan salt is created equal. Not all salt is. It can be microplastics and that stuff too. But so go to places like real salt. There's a mine in Utah, or the original Himalayan salt. It's got a long, great track record, things like that. So add the stuff back in, and then, you know, what else are you consuming? So looking at your food containers, wrapping your food, hot food wrapped in plastic is a perfect prescription for phthalates, pfas, microplastics, estrogens, all of that stuff. So minimize that. Right. And then minimize ultra processed food, because everything from heavy metals and PFAs and other bisphenols are showing up also in that. So food is a good water, beverage, food, and then longer things that you're putting on your body. So what I mean by that is lotions that are staying on your body. These things you should be looking for natural products, many of which I've vetted in there, that are clean and healthy for your skin and doesn't disrupt that precious microbiome. And then things like shampoos and conditioners, they're not staying on the largest portions of your body as much. But then again, just think of it. Keep going out, improve your bathroom situation. I have this great company that I like called Bite. Bite Toothpaste.
- [135:13]
Rich Roll
Yeah, I got some. They sent me some of their products. They're like tablets for brushing your teeth. Right.
- [135:18]
Darren Olien
So you throw a tablet in, you bite down, you just brush normally, and then it's all compostable, refillable glass jars. You're eliminating that, the harsh chemicals, then stabilizers and things in your toothpaste, because that's a chemical soup. So again, that's going in your mouth. Dental floss.
- [135:39]
Rich Roll
That was a big one, too.
- [135:41]
Darren Olien
So that slippery little sliding. Guess what that is. PFAs, man. Don't put that in your mouth. That's crazy. So, you know what I do is I get a bamboo charcoal dental floss. I just wet it and it's basically as good. So just wet it first. Boom. You don't have to put PFAS in your mouth ever again.
- [136:02]
Rich Roll
I'm disappointed that you don't make your own dental floss, though.
- [136:07]
Darren Olien
Weaving it on the back 40.
- [136:09]
Rich Roll
Sorry, Rich. I'm gonna. I'm running late to the podcast.
- [136:13]
Darren Olien
I got this yucca. Yucca plant would be good, actually pull that apart. That would actually work. I'm gonna. I'm gonna do a reel on Instagram just for you. All right, good. And then, you know, work your way out. Work your way out to your clothing and be more responsible like that. Work your way out to your home, what kind of cleaning products, things like that. And just keep, you know, moving forward. You don't have to be perfect, but you're just moving forward to clean up your environment so that you can have the best life ever.
- [136:44]
Rich Roll
Right on, man. I love you, buddy. You did a great job with this book. It's a real act of public service and I think it's going to do really well, man. Can't wait for it to be out in the world and start impacting people so we can change the world.
- [137:01]
Darren Olien
Thanks, dude. Yeah, it's like a guide. I think that I hope that people can just open it up and learn a little something every day and start applying it. So that was a big lift for sure.
- [137:15]
Rich Roll
Yeah. And anything else up on the horizon that you're. You want to talk about? Yeah, you got a lot of shit going on. We could. We could spend five more hours talking about all the projects you got your.
- [137:26]
Darren Olien
Yeah.
- [137:27]
Rich Roll
Muddy paws in.
- [137:28]
Darren Olien
Yeah. I mean, you know, down to Earth, you know, season three. That doesn't look like it's going to happen. There's some challenges with many different things, but not going to divulge it, but I hinted at it. I am working on some really cool other television projects that are. I'm stoked about. And again, all solution based. Moving forward. Still working to build out my house.
- [137:58]
Rich Roll
Yeah. Still in the yurt. Working on getting the. The sustainable housing project up on its feet.
- [138:05]
Darren Olien
Yeah. And, you know, I got a new partner with Barucas, with Steve Fabos, and we cleaned up a lot of things, so I'M I'm so excited for that business and that nut to get out. Putting my formulator hat back on. So I'm formulating some stuff with, with the nut and other superfoods and stuff so that I'm stoked about. And then, you know, working in the clean energy space with my crazy friends in the science community and clean energy tech. So that's some of the stuff that people don't know much about because it's not public. But we're working with governments around the world and New Zealand, Australia, Mexico and here in the States too, of creating clean power. And that's a whole other thing. But it just helps to, you know, we're here and so I just want to give it my best.
- [139:00]
Rich Roll
Right on, man. Yeah. Well, maybe you can come back and we can do a whole clean energy conversation in the meantime. Barucas, you know, this is, we didn't even mention Barucas until the very end here. But is it available nationwide? Can people overseas get it? If people want to, you got to check out. Baruch is not.
- [139:19]
Darren Olien
Oh man.
- [139:20]
Rich Roll
Go listen to our other podcast about it. But a delicious, super nutritious, superfood nut product that is your company.
- [139:29]
Darren Olien
Yeah, it's the greatest. It's the greatest nut ever. I mean it literally checks all the boxes and meaning that it's. We had a, which maybe you didn't know, we had a third party Swiss company do an audit of our process of how we collect the nut, how we work with the nut, how we deliver the nut and the whole process of fair trade and planting trees and supporting the biome and the Saharu and we rated higher than any company that they've ever tested. So we're a carbon sink by us literally just being in business today. And we're still improving on that process. So yeah, people can get the product nationwide. I really hope that the UK and other places open up soon. But it's delicious. It's my passion. It kind of represents the superfood side of me because it gets to support the people there, help a biome that's being hurt with deforestation. And the customers get to not only have the micronutrients of a wild food, but they get to enjoy it as well. And all your guests now will be.
- [140:41]
Rich Roll
Yeah, you got to keep us stocked over here. I will happily pick pawn them off on every guest that walks in here. So I assume it's in. I know it's in a variety of supermarkets here, but should people try to buy it online or should they look for it in their natural foods market.
- [140:57]
Darren Olien
Well, you can certainly help us out by asking for your local grocer to carry it and then we're going to do some bigger campaigns, but you can get it online and most people don't know we have an amazing butter and we have the chocolate covered with because early in the early days we would be stocked up and then we'd lose. We didn't have the mechanism sorted out so we would be start and stop. So now we're guns blazing.
- [141:22]
Rich Roll
Barucas.com Barucas.com Baby all right. In the meantime, pick up fatal conveniences and just sit quietly at home and await Darren's next appearance on the podcast, whenever that might be. All right, Like I said, I love you, buddy.
- [141:35]
Darren Olien
Love you too.
- [141:36]
Rich Roll
And I'm here to support you.
- [141:38]
Darren Olien
Love you. Thank you brother.
- [141:40]
Rich Roll
Cheers. Peace Plants. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page@richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books Finding Ultra Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power meal planner@mealplanner.richroll.com if you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com sponsors and finally, for podcast updates, special offers on On Books, the Meal Planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page@richroll.com Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Cameolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis and Morgan McRae with assistance from our Creative Director, Dan Drake, Content Management by Shana Savoy, copywriting by Ben Prior and of course our theme music was created all the way back in 2012 by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace Plants Namaste.