David Bronner On Cosmic Engagement, Conscious Capitalism & Cultivating Unity

Eat local. Buy organic. Avoid GMO. Give back. Be of service. These are all great practices. Good for your health. Good for humanity. And good for the planet. But it's not enough. The health and environmental problems we currently face are global epidemics of unprecedented scope and scale. We simply cannot solve these issues with the mindset that created them. What we need, now more than ever, is a revolution of consciousness. There are few people more well suited for this conversation than David Bronner. By far the most unique ‘CEO' I have ever met, this week's guest is the Cosmic Engagement Officer of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, the top-selling brand of natural soaps in North America and producer of a range of organic body care and food products. The Dr. Bronner story, which is amazing, begins in 1948 with Emanuel Bronner — a German immigrant, third-generation master soapmaker, master consciousness and generally far out dude — who used his ecological soaps to proselytize his “All One” philosophy, labeling product bottles with the key tenets of his teachings on self-realization and unity across religious and ethnic divides. Embraced by 1960's counterculture for its ecological properties and spiritual sensibility, the brand soon found it's way into most natural foods markets across the United States. David and his brother Michael eventually took stewardship of the family business, shepherding their grandfather's brand from counterculture cult status to mainstream embrace by growing revenues from $4 million in 1998 to over $111 million in 2017. Along the way, David went to great lengths to respect, protect and ultimately deepen Emanuel's vision, cultivating a thriving and truly conscious capitalistic enterprise making socially & environmentally responsible products while successfully pursuing its broader mission to create a better world for ourselves and future generations. Environmental activist. Psychonaut. Visionary. These are but a few of the words that describe David, a man who very much shares his grandfather's ‘cosmic hippie’ DNA but matches it with entrepreneurial flair, a degree from Harvard and the business savvy necessary to grow and sustain an ongoing concern at scale. Under David's stewardship, Dr. Bronner's has championed a number of causes, many of which provide the foundation for today's conversation — a free range exchange that explores David's involvement in advancing animal rights, drug policy reform, GMO regulation, regenerative organic agricultural practices, fair trade projects and practices, medicinal applications for cannabis and psychedelics, as well as wage equality, including self-imposed caps on executive pay. Backing up its mission statement, roughly a third of Dr. Bronner's profits are dedicated to charitable giving and activist causes annually. Furthermore, the company is a founding partner in the Climate Collaborative, which leverages the power of the Natural Products Industry to compel action on climate change. This is David's story. And it's sure to blow your mind. Disclaimer #1: David expounds upon his personal experience with with psychedelics and cannabis in the context of spiritual growth. Disclaimer #2: This is not a branded podcast. I have no financial relationship with Dr. Bronner’s and was not paid to host David (to be clear, I have never accepted money to host a guest, and never will). I am simply a fan of the Dr. Bronner ethos and products, have followed David’s journey with admiration for some time and have always wanted to have this conversation. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  We're wrecking the planet in a lot of different ways, but agriculture is one of our main ways of doing it. But if we do it in a correct way with regenerative organic principles, if you look at a wild ecosystem, you have no synthetic chemical inputs, no pesticides, no fertilizers. There's a sustainable balance of animal and plant life, and it's all integrated. And our farming systems need to replicate a natural ecosystem and not be dependent on synthetic chemical inputs.

• 1:32Rich Roll?

  That's David Bronner, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:46Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody, how you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. Welcome or welcome back. I'm joined in studio right now. With my man DK, David Kahn. How are you?

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Good. It's good to be here.

• 2:02Rich Roll?

  It's been a minute since you've dropped in for a little chit chat in the intro section to the podcast. How are you feeling?

• 2:09Speaker 02

  I feel good. I mean, today I feel good.

• 2:13Rich Roll?

  So just to recap for new listeners, David joined us probably six weeks ago or something like that.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  Maybe 10.

• 2:20Rich Roll?

  To talk a little bit about hashtag DK Goals, setting a focus and intention for 2019. I think that episode resulted in some good feedback for you, some stuff to think about. How are you doing with your goals?

• 2:36Speaker 02

  First, let me just say the feedback was great and I appreciate everybody's thoughtful responses. How am I doing with my goals? I feel like I started the year off pretty well and then I feel like I hit some walls. There was some rain in Los Angeles. I wasn't exercising. My tennis partner was in New York for two months. My diet went off the rails. And then the inner monologue of you're not exercising enough, you're not eating well enough, you're not meditating, or you're not meditating enough. And then you just, I just hit the off switch. I'm just like, I don't want to think about how my progress

• 3:13Rich Roll?

  You shut down.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I don't feel like I'm doing well. And, you know, a lot of the feedback was really, some of the stuff is very practical, very incremental, very useful. Just, you know, drink more water, say more kind things to yourself, try to change, you know, make sure, make conscious decision to eat one green meal a week, like stuff that's super achievable. And then there's like more ambitious goals. And I think taking practical steps is difficult. And I think looking at the end goal is easy for me. Oh, I'd like to run a 5K, or I'd like to do anything. But doing the work is where it gets hard. Like I walked around you in the last two days and it feels amazing, one, to be active, two, to get out of the house and not have the isolation. And I think spending

• 3:56Speaker 02

  a lot of time by myself, you know, working or whatever in the last couple of months and not having Success.

• 4:02Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  It's debilitating.

• 4:03Rich Roll?

  So you're sort of the stand-in for the everyman and the kind of typical struggles that most people, I think, face and confront when trying to tackle a wellness challenge or just try to get, like you said, incrementally a little bit better in mind, body, and spirit. And I just know for myself that the best way for me to kind of kickstart that process is to set a goal. And in my case, I try to set goals that are just outside my comfort zone, things that I think are doable and achievable, but also scare me. So in my case,

• 4:44Rich Roll?

  because I'm going to put myself in this conversation as well, I've decided to, a lot of people have been asking me, like, when are you going to do another race? It's been two years since I did Otillo. So I have committed by way of announcing on Chris Howth, my coach's podcast, I guess, on his episode 100 the other day, I committed to doing this event in Qatar. It's a three-day Ultraman distance event that does the distances in reverse order and circumnavigates the peninsula of Qatar. I think it's essentially the entire country. I don't know that much about it, but Chris is doing it. One of his athletes created this event, and I agreed to do it. It's in November. It's been 10 years since

• 5:28Rich Roll?

  I've done an Ultraman race. And in this case, the event begins with a double marathon on the first day. The second day is a very long bike.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 5:37Rich Roll?

  The third day is, I think, like, a 90-mile bike, followed by a nine or 10-kilometer swim. So you finish with the swim. I've never done anything like this before. And I'm a little scared, but I'm in. And what I've noticed just in the last few days since I publicly committed to that on Chris's podcast is that It brings everything in my life into focus. Suddenly, I have to be very organized and intentional and mindful about the choices that I make, the foods that I eat, the workouts that I'm going to be doing. They all suddenly have a purpose rather than some vague notion of like, well, I just want to be fit or I want to feel better.

• 6:20Rich Roll?

  So what I'm saying, A, in addition to publicly announcing that I'm going to be doing this thing, is that it might behoove you to identify your version of that for yourself, whether it's a 5K or what you want the scale to say, or just something that you can put out on the calendar some distance from now, that you can then create a roadmap that will get you excited, that will kickstart you into some new habits, and hopefully build momentum so that when you confront that morning when you wake up and you don't feel great, or it's raining and the weather isn't so good and you just don't feel like doing it, the momentum will help you override those speed bumps and get you on a new path.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  I agree. I do think I need to make a goal. The physical thing, I'd love to say 5K, 10K, mini, try, whatever. I just don't know physically how much my knee will hold up. I definitely can do a goal for the weight. I think 190. I went down, I was at, started at, I think, 213 and got to 208. Now I'm back to like 214. I think 190 seems like...

• 7:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  I haven't been 190 in...

• 7:32Rich Roll?

  And I can help you create the path to achieving that. And I think that's totally doable.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:37Rich Roll?

  It's very doable.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  I think it is.

• 7:39Rich Roll?

  And, you know, we can monitor the knee and all of that and we can, we don't have to commit to anything at this moment, but maybe think about that.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  I feel like the weight definitely, I mean, I was really conscious of it and then I just kind of like felt lost, honestly. I felt like, oh, I'm not, I'm not having success.

• 7:57Rich Roll?

  You should call me in those instances. I'm here for you, brother.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  I know, man, but it's just...

• 8:05Speaker 02

  You know.

• 8:06Rich Roll?

  All right, well, put that in the hopper. To be continued. Everybody listening, hit DK up on Twitter at David Darren Khan.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:16Rich Roll?

  With R R E N, hashtag DK Goals. And to be continued, my friend.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  I appreciate all your comments, sincerely.

• 8:24Rich Roll?

  Did I mention that today's guest is David Bronner? You know Bronner Soap, right?

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:31Rich Roll?

  So David is a super interesting, fascinating guy. He is the CEO, which stands for Cosmic Engagement Officer, which gives you an idea of the spiritual pedigree of this dude, of Bronner Soap. And what's amazing about this is that a lot of us, myself included, like, I love Bronner Soap. I've been a customer of their product line forever. If you pick up their soaps in the store, do you notice like there's these manifestos in small type on the labels? Have you noticed that?

• 9:05Speaker 02

  I haven't.

• 9:06Rich Roll?

  It's kind of incredible. Next time you're in the store and you see their soap, pick it up and just read.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:11Rich Roll?

  These words, it'll blow your mind. They're like spiritual manifestos. And that's because this company was founded by David's grandfather back in 1948, this guy Emanuel Bronner, who was a super tripper. He was a third generation master soap maker. And he used these labels on his ecological line of soaps to really spread this message of unity across religious and ethnic divides with this kind of slogan of, we are all one or none. And it's kind of inspiring and cool. David's been on my radar for a while. He's somebody I've wanted to talk to for a long time. And he definitely does not disappoint. This is a super cool conversation. And there's a lot more I want to say about David

• 9:56Rich Roll?

  and the Bronner legacy.

• 10:05Rich Roll?

  Okay, David Bronner. What do I want to say about this guy? Well, basically, he's like this interesting mashup of his grandfather's cosmic hippie sensibility merged with this savvy, business-minded approach to making this Bronner Soap Company commercially successful. And I think it's fair to say, he's a visionary. He's an environmental activist. He's a Harvard Biology graduate. And he's really dedicated his life to honoring his grandfather's vision while also continuing to make socially and environmentally responsible

• 10:44Rich Roll?

  products, and making it all financially successful. He partners with Certified Fair Trade Projects. Everything they produce and make is certified organic. He's also a founding partner in the Climate Collaborative, which we talk a little bit about today. He's super into animal advocacy, wage equality, and drug policy reform, all of which are subjects that we get into at length today. And I think that's all I want to say about him. Final note before we get into it. David talks a lot about psychedelics and cannabis in the context of his personal spiritual growth. And as a longtime person in recovery for

• 11:24Rich Roll?

  substance abuse, I'm not endorsing this method or these behaviors, but to each his own. And I found his story to be very interesting. And finally, I just want to say upfront that this is not a branded podcast. I'm not being sponsored or paid by Dr. Bronner's or David to produce this conversation. I just am a huge fan of this company and their legacy. And I followed David for quite some time, and he's a fascinating individual that I've wanted to talk to for a very long time. So, without further ado, let's get far out with David Bronner. Let's do it.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's funny that, you know, I had some when I was a kid. I had some kind of issues. I don't know exactly what they were, but I was in some at the two 134 interchange. It was like a hospital there. And my mom had me in there doing intensive therapy.

• 12:20Rich Roll?

  When you were a kid?

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like dyslexia, right, left confusion, balance issues, different language difficulties.

• 12:27Rich Roll?

  They couldn't figure out what it was though?

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. I had some, I don't know what the exact diagnosis was, but my brain had to learn new ways of doing certain things. And I still like, you know, do certain letters backward, you know, I mean, they're the right way. It's just I don't, I do them the whatever way.

• 12:45Rich Roll?

  Right, but not like textbook dyslexic?

• 12:48Speaker 01

  No. Yeah.

• 12:49Rich Roll?

  But you must have been a good student, dude. You went to Harvard, so you figured it out somehow.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I did, but I mostly read and just like was kind of learned on my own and could kick a football really far. I think soccer was my passion and then cross over into football and got recruited into different colleges.

• 13:07Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow. So you play football at Harvard?

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, for two years.

• 13:10Rich Roll?

  You did?

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:11Rich Roll?

  What, you were, you were the kicker?

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I kicked from nine, well, 91 to 92 and then, but I got a little bored because soccer was my life.

• 13:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Um, my friends were playing rugby and having a lot more fun. Uh, it was, it wasn't NCAA.

• 13:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  And it just kind of blended more of my skill set. Plus there was no drug testing for cannabis, which was increasingly, increasingly important to mention.

• 13:35Rich Roll?

  Problematic for you, man.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  I'm like, dude, not another fall season, man.

• 13:39Rich Roll?

  I have a hard time visualizing you in a football uniform, though. I wouldn't have thought that. That's wild.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it was, yeah, and you know, and it just got less fun, you know, like just the four hour practices, day in, day out.

• 13:53Rich Roll?

  I hear you, brother.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:55Rich Roll?

  It's work.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And I just wanted to make sure I was playing a sport I was a lot more passionate about than, I mean, I, I, I enjoyed, I played tight end in high school, but I wasn't. Good enough to play at that level.

• 14:08Rich Roll?

  You're a big dude, right? Like, what are you, like, six, six or something?

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Six, four and a half.

• 14:13Rich Roll?

  Wow, yeah, you're a tall dude. Where'd you go to high school?

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Hoover High, Susan Gleno.

• 14:17Rich Roll?

  Right. So LA native. Thanks for coming back up.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:22Rich Roll?

  And Sinidis to talk to me. Been looking forward to this for a long time. Lots of points of interest and stuff we can explore.

• 14:31Rich Roll?

  I guess the first thing I want to know, as somebody who is at the vanguard, like the activist vanguard of everything sustainable, regenerative, eco-friendly, you know, somebody who really lives in this space, like, what's top of mind for you right now? What do you have? What do you like knee deep in at the moment? That's most interesting.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Right on. Well, we were launching with partners, including Patagonia, the clothing company, and then leading animal welfare orgs like Compassion World Farming, leading fair labor orgs like Fair World Project, and leading soil health organizations like Rodale and Demeter. And Demeter holds the biodynamic standard and Rodale's the heart of the organic farming movement. A single standard called Regenerative Organic that basically brings together the best of the soil health, animal welfare, and fair labor into a single standard, a single consumer-facing certification standard,

• 15:34Speaker 01

  so that when you purchase food or clothes or soap, you can know that not only was it grown in a way that respects the soil, but also all the people and the farmers and the workers involved were treated fairly, and any animals or livestock involved where it was a pasture-based system, no confined, like, the high, like, a whole other level of animal welfare criteria than the current organic standard.

• 15:57Rich Roll?

  Right, like this high watermark that takes into consideration labor conditions, the way the soil is treated, and on top of that, how the long-term sustainability prospects of the manner in which the product, whether it be food or soap or what have you, is harvested.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. And this, you know, we feel is like, we're like, one-third of the Earth's surface has basically been terraformed under industrial agricultural mismanagement. We're

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Wrecking the planet in a lot of different ways, but agriculture is one of our main ways of doing it. And but if we do it in a in a in a correct way with regenerative organic principles, if you look at a wild ecosystem, you have no, no synthetic chemical inputs, no pesticides, no fertilizers. There's a sustainable balance of animal and plant life. And it's all integrated. And our farming systems need to replicate a natural ecosystem and not be dependent on synthetic chemical inputs. Right. Yeah.

• 16:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, soil health is, is, is really, you know, the essential ingredient in, you know, the, the long term viability of our species and, and many animal species. It's a subject that's come up on this podcast many times, most recently with Dr. Zach Bush. Do you know, do you know Zach at all?

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Uh, maybe.

• 17:19Rich Roll?

  If you guys don't, you definitely should know each other because you're on the same wavelength here. But I think it would be informative for people that, that perhaps, you know, aren't as steeped in this as you are, to understand the difference between organic and regenerative. And on top of that, kind of what's like canvas, what's going on in this world of labeling that I think is creating as much confusion as it is clarity.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  Right on. Well, I mean, so what's the, the default right now, conventional industrial agriculture is it's, it's basically chemical agriculture, mostly genetically engineered commodity crops like soy and corn that are grown for our, for feed. Like one, over one half of American agriculture now is devoted to feed crops that are inefficiently converted in animal, animal, energy, carbohydrates and protein. And these animals are in confined animal factory.

• 18:21Rich Roll?

  CAFOs.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  CAFOs. And so it's just, you know, it's, it's, it's a horrendous situation from an animal welfare perspective. And then, but from an environmental perspective, taking the, the animals off the land and putting them in boxes, and then growing the feed crops where they were, so that their fertility is not integrated into the cropping cycle. There instead you have these huge manure lagoons that are spewing methane into the air. We're, we're instead bringing these crops to harvest with, with more and more synthetic nitrogen and other fertilizers and. Synthetic nitrogen is made in the Haber-Bosch process. It's one of the most energy intensive reactions that we do on the planet. It consumes one to three percent of the world's energy to make synthetic nitrogen.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  And then it destroys the soil biota, the natural life in soil. Soil is a living organism, it's a living ecosystem. And we're basically systematically destroying the life in that soil and bringing in our crops to harvest with more and more chemical inputs and treating soil like dead dirt, like an inert medium, instead of the life-giving resource that it is. And so, you know, and we have just way too much livestock. Like the population's like totally unsustainable.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  So, so organic is like the, you know, is a good step, a key step, which is basically removes chemical inputs. You can't use chemical fertilizers or chemical pesticides when you grow crops. But in and of itself, it doesn't have necessarily prescribe a high level way of managing your farm. It just says what you can't do, it doesn't say what you should do. And regenerative is kind of what you should be doing. And regenerative is a set of principles where you farm in nature's image. And if you, in a natural ecosystem, you never see bare ground or that's, you know, that's, maybe there was a fire or something and then quickly it's covered over. Yeah.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  And when you see our farmlands, it's like bare and open to erosion and topsoil loss. I mean, that's ridiculous. And we need to have roots in the ground all the time. So you're always having, you're always putting in your next crop or a cover crop as soon as you harvest. So you keep roots in the ground, you keep a diverse crop rotation. Right. Which disinterrupts pest cycles naturally. And then minimize the chemical inputs.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  And

• 20:48Rich Roll?

  It's essentially the Joel Salatin Polyface Farms model. Is that accurate?

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, it's in, in, in large extent. I mean, I would, my one critique of Polyface, um, I mean, obviously it's outside of the factory farm model and, um, that's crucial. And obviously having animals be on grass, especially ruminants is, is, is, is awesome. Um, but, um, the feed like he's like, so there's a difference between ruminants, which is your, your cattle, right?

• 21:19Rich Roll?

  Large herbivores.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Larger before, so they can actually get their energy from grass. Um, but chickens and pigs, mono gastrics like ourselves, they can supplement off pasture. I mean, they eat some bugs and some seeds, but they're the lion's share of their diet's still coming from grain that's being bought in from elsewhere. And so Joel is as of, as my current understanding is still not like that grain, like how that grain is grown is going to kind of make or break the, um, kind of the, the, the impact of how the earth is being treated, the amount of carbon that's being sequestered, sequestered. Uh, one way to look at it is if we wave a magic wand and get all of our chickens and pigs out of

• 22:01Speaker 01

  their cages and back on the land in a kind of polyface style, uh, uh, farm, which is obviously great from an animal welfare perspective to the extent that, um, they're treated well and have freedom of movement and, and ideally they're, and it's humane and quick. Um, that even if we wave a magic wand, if we don't change their feed, like you're still for a mono gastric, you've still got to feed the same amount of corn and soy as you would in a cage.

• 22:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Is on a, on a, on a pasture.

• 22:30Rich Roll?

  You're going to have to grow that somewhere.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  And you have to grow. And so how that's grown is still matters.

• 22:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Crucially.

• 22:36Rich Roll?

  It's kind of a, a hole in the Alan Savery argument, right? As well. Cause isn't that sort of part of the same thing?

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like one of our critiques of the savory certification is on the ruminant side, it's solid that, you know, insofar as they're emphasizing cattle should be on grass, it should be eating only grass on a given land. But their certification has a hole insofar as bought-in feed. When you look at bought-in, you know, corn or soy for your monogastrics, but then even for ruminants, they'll buy in hay, chopped hay and cut hay. And a lot of times that hay is grown, like all feed crops with a whole bunch of synthetic fertility and pesticides. So like even if you're regenerating the land where your livestock are roaming, like what about the land that's growing all your feed crops?

• 23:27Speaker 01

  And if you're not taking responsibility for that, then...

• 23:30Rich Roll?

  You're not having, you don't have a comprehensive vision for...

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Truly holistic.

• 23:34Rich Roll?

  Exactly, yeah. Yeah, look, you're a long time vegan dude, like what, since like 96 or something like that?

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, 96.

• 23:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, all right, you know, I've been vegan for 15 years. I would, I would prefer to, you know, have a vegan utopia where we all wake up and realize that we don't need to be eating these animals at all, that it's incredibly inefficient and unsustainable and cruel and all of that. And just, you know, we all, we all, you know, have this, you know, spiritual epiphany and we transcend to the next plane of consciousness overnight.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  We're working on it.

• 24:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I would, yeah, I'm, I'm working hard towards that vision as well, but that's not happening tomorrow. And given the fact that it's not a plausible reality in the immediate future, we do have to consider, you know, better solutions for the omnivorous planet that we live on. And that involves taking into consideration, you know, how we're raising these ruminants. Is there a better way for the meat-eating population while we continue to eat meat? And the demand for meat continues to rise. So one of the big questions I have for you is, you know, I lodge you for pursuing this regenerative organic certification.

• 24:48Rich Roll?

  I think it's super important, but is this, if we were to all adhere to this standard... We couldn't, we don't have enough land or resources to feed the demand for meat as it currently stands, right? Like if all farms certain, you know, adhere to this standard overnight, all of a sudden.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  There'd be a lot less livestock.

• 25:07Rich Roll?

  We can't, we can't do it, right?

• 25:08Speaker 01

  No, I mean, that's it. I mean, this method of farming depends on a, on a, on a much lower population.

• 25:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  10% of the population of livestock out of their cages, integrated back into the land. And, and, you know, and to be clear, animals are not essential to a regenerative organic system. You know, we can't have a totally vegan, uh, uh, method of farming, but insofar as livestock are involved, then yeah, they need to be integrated in a pasture-based way and their population needs to be dramatically reduced. So regardless of whether we choose to eat meat or not, we have to eat much less of it and much better. If we want to transition our agriculture to a truly regenerative basis.

• 25:49Rich Roll?

  And, and that becomes problematic when we see the rise of the middle class in places like China and India, where the demand for meat is skyrocketing right now.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:00Rich Roll?

  That paints a grimmer picture in terms of the plausibility of this.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. And actually, so another big piece of our advocacy is on meat reduction and vegan advocacy. And we, we're big supporters of Good Food Institute and, um, you know, many other.

• 26:15Rich Roll?

  On the show a couple of times.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Bruce, he's rocking and obviously bringing in the next level of meat substitutes and dairy substitutes. Um, are key. Um, we just obviously need to be reducing army consumption in, in the developed world. But then, as you say, in the developing world, like this is not, you know, we, we need to skip what we did. Like we need to, it's kind of like, hopefully what they're doing with like going from no phones to, you know, 4G cellular. Like if we can just skipping the, you know, skipping some coal, maybe going straight to solar, you know? If we can skip what we did here with these intensive factory farming. Yeah, you know, or at least, well, you know, cause like India, right? Like they have, I mean, most of our population

• 27:00Speaker 01

  was and maybe still is vegetarian, although now that's starting to shift, but they still have the cultural memory of the ethics of it. So if you can bring in like, okay, so now maybe they develop a taste for, you know, lamb or, or whatever it is that is interfering with kind of their traditional.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  More is like if you can bring in like a, you know, like a clean meat or something that approximates that taste and texture and feel and price and everything else Bruce says, you know, then, you know, maybe we can avoid.

• 27:34Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  The disasters.

• 27:35Rich Roll?

  And you don't have to overcome a lifetime of, a lifetime habit of eating meat in a different way.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. I mean, the cultural memories there and, you know, hopefully.

• 27:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's gonna be interesting because it's happening at some point.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, you know, um, I was on a panel with the, with the CEO of Memphis Meats.

• 27:56Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  And I think.

• 27:57Rich Roll?

  Valletti?

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like a few years ago and I think he had like, the meatballs were like 10 grand a pop at that point, but I think they're down to a grand and they're about to be 10 bucks and, you know, and very soon they're gonna be, you know, 10 cents. So that'll be a whole different world.

• 28:11Rich Roll?

  Saying, I, cause I keep begging him to come on the podcast. He's like, I'm not ready yet. We're still working. We still got a long way to go, but it seems like it's advancing pretty quickly. I mean, it really is just a matter of time before they hit some inflection point and the price will, will, you know, be able to comport with, um, consumer demand for it and we're gonna see some big changes.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think, you know, increasing the availability of tasty plant-based options is, you know, a key part of the equation and then the consciousness of, you know, why we should be thinking about, you know, what we're eating and do we really need to be killing an animal to sustain ourselves? Or do we, can we not do that? And if we choose to do that, let's like really take responsibility

• 28:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  for that and make sure that animal lived a life that, you know, wasn't, you know, going to hell and back.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  And, you know, and that's a big other part of our advocacy is integration of cannabis and psychedelic allies to help us wake up to, uh, some of these dimensions of our kind of collective planetary being. And, um, so we're hopeful that.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  You know, we're going to be bringing these these allies into the culture in a significant way in the coming years and as the sustainable, you know, plant-based options are more and more available and, you know, yeah, and the consciousness, the vegan movement, everything else is really hitting its stride. So.

• 29:35Rich Roll?

  You are your grandfather's grandson.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:38Rich Roll?

  You are. I mean, I want to get into the, I want to get into the consciousness stuff because this, this is like amazing to me and super trippy and awesome because you're carrying a certain vibration that really is the legacy of your grandfather. And it's, it's fascinating to see how you've taken that mantle in a very natural way. And not only, you know, gracefully ushered it into the business that you're running with your brother, but, but also, you know, in this very activist way, in this very conscious capitalist way that has made not only a social impact, but also an environmental and economic impact because you've grown this company from, you know, what, what was it like four

• 30:22Rich Roll?

  million revenue in 98 to like 111 last year or something like that, right?

• 30:27Speaker 01

  122.

• 30:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's crazy, man. I mean, that is quite something, but let's track it back to your grandfather because this guy was like off the charts, like a rock star in terms of like what he was putting out into the universe at that time.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So we're incredibly fortunate that our founder, my granddad, Dr. Bronner, he was an amazing individual. He, he himself was a third generation master soap maker from a German Jewish soap making family. He was, so by the time he came of age in the twenties, like his dad and two uncles were running the family enterprise. We had three factories and we were supplying most of the liquid soap to public washrooms in, in Germany. He was clashing with his dad and uncles in more of a generational way. They were pretty like, you know, they didn't want to be mixing politics and soap. And my granddad was pretty

• 31:25Speaker 01

  intense. Back then he was Zionist and, and just.

• 31:29Rich Roll?

  What do you think? Sorry, I'm going to interrupt you a couple of times.

• 31:33Rich Roll?

  What, what, what was it about, like, what made him that way? What happened in his childhood that made him this like spiritual warrior from a young age?

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, I don't, you know, my second cousin, like my, my granddad's cousin said to me once, this guy Henry Epstein, says, you know what, there was always one in a generation that was kind of out there, like in the Halle Bronner, like, and you know, my granddad got that gene. That's how he just kind of said it. I definitely got the gene. In my generation. And yeah, you know, he was just kind of born different. I know he, he only got, he was, I remember my great aunt saying, yeah, that poor emo, you know, his dad beat him a lot. Tried to beat that craziness out of him, you know, and, and so he came to the States when he was 21, more to just kind of do his own thing and get, you know, kind of leave his family and forge his own life.

• 32:27Rich Roll?

  But it was early days of the Nazi party, right? And he sort of saw it coming and was like, I'm out of here?

• 32:33Speaker 01

  No, he, I mean, it was the, I mean, this is 29. So, I mean, the eventual, eventual dimensions were not clear about what was about to happen. And he did become increasingly desperate to get his family out. His, he, uh, his two younger sisters got out, one in 36, um, Lottie, at the age of 20, and she ended up in a kibbutz in Israel, Bengev. And then another, Louisa got out in 38, right before they closed the border, and she became a professor of German at UMass Boston. But before that, developed waterproofing compounds for the American GI paratroopers in the Korean war, but didn't get any credit.

• 33:13Rich Roll?

  Everyone's a chemist in your family.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, and, um, yeah, and so, but his parents, like many of the Bushido Jews, thought they were going to ride out the madness and, uh,

• 33:23Rich Roll?

  They're like, don't rock the boat.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, Hitler will be, everyone will forget about him, you know, and, uh, but the factory was Aryanized in 1940, and they were deported and killed in 42 and 44. Um, so out of that, this, and then at the same time, my granddad had married and, and fathered three children in the 30s, and then his wife died, got sick and died right around the same timeframe, in the mid 40s. So he was just dealing with immense tragedy uh, in his life. But the way he dealt with it was, he felt urgently called. That in a nuclear armed world, that the next Holocaust, if we don't realize our transcendent unity across religious and ethnic divides, that the next Holocaust, we're gonna all die,

• 34:09Speaker 01

  we're gonna all perish. And that's when he felt called to go forth and spread his message of unity, what he called the moral ABC. And he was also selling this natural soap. I mean, he had become a consultant to the US soap industry and helped P and G's of the world build factories and launch products.

• 34:28Rich Roll?

  But his main thing was sort of giving these sermons, right? Did he, was he, did he come right to LA?

• 34:34Speaker 01

  He, no, he landed in Chicago, in Milwaukee. So he was in Milwaukee and then Chicago, which is kind of a crazy place to be. That was the center of antisemitism in the States back then. That's Father McLaughlin had this radio show that was super antisemitic. He was Chicago based and not the best place in certain respects, but he, he was actually in 1947, he was actually interned in a mental asylum against his will. Some, a guy named Fred Walker had actually crucified himself, or someone obviously helped him, for Dr. Bronner's peace plan. So he'd gotten on the authorities radar screens and so they basically locked him up.

• 35:16Rich Roll?

  Right. And put in an asylum for a minute there.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And during which we have, he designed like a settling system for this factory across the river that was spewing waste. He actually like cleaned it up for them, like while he was in there, like he was, he did a job.

• 35:34Rich Roll?

  Institutionized?

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, and then he fled on a third attempt, he got out of there and then he came straight to.

• 35:40Rich Roll?

  He escaped?

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, he escaped and came to LA.

• 35:43Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  So that's, and then, and then set up shop in Pershing Square, where he's in a tenement hotel, you know, mixing up his family soaps and sermonizing on the moral ABC and.

• 35:55Rich Roll?

  Is it all, all one?

• 35:57Speaker 01

  All one God faith. Yeah.

• 35:59Rich Roll?

  Which is kind of like a.

• 36:02Rich Roll?

  Does it derive from the teachings of the Essenes?

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he saw himself as an Essene rabbi.

• 36:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  And, um, and, but, but he basically drew from all faith traditions. His, his attitude is that all, all spiritual giants of whether it's Gottama or Moses or Lao Tzu or Socrates, that they all were astronomical prophets, are all inspired, witnessing the majesty of the heavens, the cosmic rhythms. And, um, and that all of them were basically saying the same thing, that, you know, get over yourselves, realize your transcendent unity, we're all children of the same divine source. And that's so for him, the labels were a way of showing the commonality across the different faith traditions and that, um, you know, that, that fundamentalism was the enemy, not, not religion per se.

• 36:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 36:51Rich Roll?

  Have you ever been to Rancho La Puerta?

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:55Rich Roll?

  In Mexico?

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 36:56Rich Roll?

  So do you know the story of Edmund Zekali? Zekali?

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:01Rich Roll?

  How do you say it?

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he's saying.

• 37:02Rich Roll?

  Cause he sounds like a very similar guy to your grandfather.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally, man.

• 37:05Rich Roll?

  Amazing dude who was like fruitarian in the jungles and had met Deborah's family when she, he, she was like a child bride and he creates this, uh, this center. It's a whole long story of him being Jewish and not being able to settle in America or being able to go back to Europe and finding this piece of land in Mexico and becoming like the first pioneer of wellness and, and fitness in the same era in which your grandfather was living, but he was.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  An area, almost.

• 37:33Rich Roll?

  Exactly, yeah. And being totally into the Essenes, he wrote all these super trippy books and, you know, it was all about healthy lifestyle and living this ascetic life based on the tradition of those Palestinian Jews.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  I, I almost went and bought, uh, built myself a biogenic dwelling and was doing the grass for a little bit. I mean, he, yeah, he, he's a, he.

• 37:56Rich Roll?

  Did they know each other?

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Um, they must've.

• 37:59Rich Roll?

  They must've.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  They must've, yeah.

• 38:01Rich Roll?

  Cause, cause like Aldous Huxley and people like that were going down to Rancho La Puerta.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:05Rich Roll?

  At the time and Edmund must've, he, he was probably around your grandfather's age.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, my grandad, you know, had his Essene book of life. I mean, I was definitely totally marked up and, um, so I'm, I'm sure there was some direct communication and obviously on the same wavelength and. You know, they were bringing in, you know, meditation and Pilates and raw foods.

• 38:27Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Like way before anybody, you know, that was the first place also where because he was Edmund was Hungarian. And a lot of below the line. Uh, workers in Hollywood, you know, people lighting camera, people like that. Um, were Hungarian as well. And it was a small community. Uh, they all knew each other. So, you know, that part of Hollywood kind of knew what Edmund was doing down in Mexico. And so when a starlet needed to like lose weight or dry out or, you know, some actor or whatever, they would, they would, they would send them down to Rancho La Puerta.

• 39:06Rich Roll?

  And that was the first, that was the beginning of like, you know, what we all know, like when Hollywood people like go to detox or whatever. But they were doing it back in like the forties and fifties before any of, you know, this stuff that we kind of, you know, see everywhere happening now.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, right on, man. And, and I guess Ed, I mean, I actually just got the full download there in the last year and a half. Uh, I finally went and visited and, and I guess he, you know, he was pretty radical, you know, he didn't like, you know, he didn't quite like how the spa kind of was gentrifying or whatever. I mean, he was like pretty, you know, was pretty ascetic and wanted, you know, people to be on this pretty strict raw food, you know, yogic path. And, uh, yeah, I guess clashed a little bit, but, um, but Deborah has really made something wonderful happen there.

• 39:55Rich Roll?

  She's amazing. I mean, she's got to be like 95 now or something like that.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  She's still rocking it.

• 40:00Rich Roll?

  You know, um, anyway, we got off, we got off track a little bit, but, um,

• 40:07Rich Roll?

  there's so many similarities there. I couldn't help but like talk about that. But the thing is, um, I mean, so your grandfather. He's, he's giving these sermons in Pershing Square, which for people who don't know is like this square right in the center of like downtown Los Angeles.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:22Rich Roll?

  Preacher man, but then people are more interested in the soap than what's coming out of his mouth. Right? So the soap becomes a vehicle for him to deliver his message.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Right. He realizes that many people are just coming to sermons to get the soap he's selling on the side and not sticking around to hear what he has to say or paying attention. So he puts what he, what he's saying on the labels of our soap. And the soap always has been more of the vehicle for the label than the labels.

• 40:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  There to promote the, the soap.

• 40:55Rich Roll?

  I remember the first time that I actually took him, like I saw the soap in the store. And I took a moment to actually read what was on it. And I was like, this is fucking insane. Like, how do they even get away with having this like on a consumer product in a store? Like, have you ever actually sat and read what's on this? It's completely mind blowing.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:17Rich Roll?

  And it's almost like it just slips under the radar. Like, I don't know how many people like don't even pay attention to that, but like it's super intense.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, you know, it's right there in plain sight.

• 41:29Rich Roll?

  I know. It's right on the soap.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, you know, I, I think like, you know, my granddad went, he blames it on the shock treatments he received when he was, when he was interned against his will, but he went, he went, he basically lost his vision and was completely blind by, by 1970. And I don't think he realized just how busy the labels were getting.

• 41:48Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  As he was downloading more and more of the full truth on, on the.

• 41:52Rich Roll?

  He's just channeling this, right?

• 41:54Speaker 01

  And so now, you know, so now we've got, you know, 3,000 words on, on a, on a core label. And, um, and it's intense, as you say, but it's also like very interesting textural kind of backdrop. And when you look at it, it's got this old apothecary feel and look. And I think, um, yeah, I mean, ideally people spend time and, and grok the message. But it's kind of, just kind of conveys, you know, kind of old time authenticity and simplicity.

• 42:19Rich Roll?

  And yeah, it has that kind of vintage vibe that now is, is like hipster modern, I suppose.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it violates every design principle, you know, but it works.

• 42:31Rich Roll?

  Has it always had that same look and feel? Has it evolved at all? Or have you stayed true to what it looked like when he was doing it?

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, he evolved it himself. Like, there's a funny quote in Esquire that interviewed him in like 1973. And the reporter is like, you know, hey, what happened to Freud and Young? You know? And my granddad was like, you know, Freud and Young, important, but no longer relevant to uniting the great spaceship earth. You know? So he was, yeah.

• 43:05Rich Roll?

  So break down his, his, you know, his like psychonaut philosophy of, you know, unity of consciousness for the betterment of humanity.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, you know, I mean, he, it was within an overall, you know, Judaic, I think, context. But, um, you know, he saw that the Creator and creation were one, were all one, were in our essence, one with one another, and our separateness is illusory. And, um, and yeah, so and he just advocated, uh, simple living, close to the earth. Um, he conducted most of his business on the sun deck on a levered principeto. And, uh, you know, and

• 43:52Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God. It's like a movie.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, he was amazing. You know, just really liberated cat. Um, and but really intense, you know?

• 44:02Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you, yeah, he was kind of on the coming from the mountaintop.

• 44:06Rich Roll?

  And at the time, I mean, we can look back on it now and laud him and see him as this visionary. But what, how was he received? You know, in, you know, when he was around?

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the rise of the counterculture really resonated. It was like perfect timing. Um, I mean, here's this guy, you know, talking about, you know, peace and love and living in harmony with the earth with a soap that's concentrated versatility can wash your, your hair, your dog, the dishes by the side of the river.

• 44:35Rich Roll?

  Like the famous 18 uses or whatever it is.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, and just really resonated to the time. Yeah. Which we now have toothpaste. And we say brushing with Bronner's just got a lot better. So, yeah.

• 44:48Rich Roll?

  Actually haven't tried to brush my teeth with like the Castile soap.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, you know, it works. You know, it's like, don't recommend it.

• 44:56Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, so with That like beat culture and then sixties counterculture. He had his little niche within that.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think he was frustrated that his audience wasn't, you know, planetary wide and and he wanted to unite this spaceship instantly and, you know, was, I guess, maybe disappointed it wasn't happening on the timetable that he was hoping. But, you know, I think we're, you know, appreciating all of his, you know, incredible gifts, but also some of the flaws in his character. And, you know, my granddad was not a good dad and my granddad basically went to go save the world and abandoned his family, more or less, and was, so my dad and uncle-

• 45:43Rich Roll?

  That's what happens with guys like this, you know? That's the other side of the whole thing.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, and he had divins of the Holocaust behind him and, you know, just like, you know, it's just, I mean, there's just a lot of generational tragedy coming through the generations. But my dad really compensated and made sure that our family, like families was first and wanted nothing to do with all one vision or religion in general. He was just all about family and community. And so me and my brother and sister, you know, came up in this incredible household in Glendale, Reaganite, suburban-

• 46:16Rich Roll?

  Right, stable.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Stable and just beautiful. And my dad was like the most moral guy. I mean, he would just, you know, stand up for whoever and just volunteer his time. And so we blend his kind of focus on pragmatic, what can you do for your brother right here, right now? You know, with my granddad's more cosmic-

• 46:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, utopian idealism. Cause he set the company up originally as like a nonprofit religious organization and would just funnel all the profits back into, you know, into causes, right?

• 46:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:49Rich Roll?

  It's like not, I mean, there's conscious capitalism and then there's just, you know, an unsound business practice in terms of like longevity, right?

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and IRS disagreed with his tax exempt-

• 47:01Rich Roll?

  This is not a religious organization. This is a soap company.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Right. So, so and actually, my dad stepped in, my mom and uncle-

• 47:10Speaker 01

  In the late eighties to um basically get our the company out of bankruptcy. My grandad was owed crap tons of back taxes on a on, you know, basically not having paid them. And um but, you know, I was surrounded by a bunch of bad advisors as well. And so my dad and mom and uncle, dad especially, really, you know, righted the ship. And my dad had come up and was working for a chemical specialty firm as the head of operations in Atwater area. Um, where I came up and developed, among other other things, firefighting foam um for forest and structured fires. It's now standard and modified a version for Hollywood as a fake snow. So we grew up blasting snow foam on trees.

• 47:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  For Alka Salted.

• 47:57Rich Roll?

  And this is still the same stuff that they use, right? Did he patent that? And like, it's his, that's the industry standard?

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, Warner Brothers is a master distributor. But yeah, so he, you know, so so the firefighting foam is owned by some Tel Aviv based chemical conglomerate at this point.

• 48:13Rich Roll?

  So when you're growing up in essentially the Pasadena area, Glendale, like that must have been, you must have been a popular kid. Like, let's go over to your house and.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  And blast foam on each other.

• 48:22Rich Roll?

  All over the place?

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was incredible. And yeah, I mean, when you when you blast foam in the world, I mean, it just transforms, you know, we're all one under foam, you know, and it just kind of.

• 48:33Rich Roll?

  Can't be in a bad mood.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it just transfigures the world. I mean, whatever's going on is over, you know, it's now it's foam time and and and it's just this ecstatic liberatory space.

• 48:44Rich Roll?

  And now Bronner's, you guys have like a truck that drives around and sprays foam at people's private parties and stuff?

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so kind of blending my grandad and dad. So we take uh Dr. Bronner soap, which is at this point made, it's the same simple recipe as for five generations. Um, but, you know, now with regenerative organic, our olive oil is coming from Palestine and Israel. All of our coconut oil is coming from Sri Lanka out of a tsunami relief project and palm oil in this super sustainable way out of Ghana in this small holder projects. But we run that through the compressed air foam system and, and, and blast basically Dr. Bronner's

• 49:25Rich Roll?

  Soap.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  Soap in like a, in a firefighting foam form.

• 49:29Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  And we have a fire truck that in honor of my dad, my dad's paranormal is an eagle. So we have this huge blazing like fire phoenix on the front with Tibetan fire on the fire truck.

• 49:39Rich Roll?

  And then like big Plexiglas trailers that we like shower trailers we blast foam into

• 49:45Speaker 01

  for pride and

• 49:46Rich Roll?

  Do you take that to Burning Man?

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually the, the original foam unit was, I built it. So when my dad, my grandad died ninety seven, then my dad died ninety eight and I had a whole complex journey to embrace.

• 50:01Rich Roll?

  We're gonna, we're gonna get there. We're gonna get into that. Like go ahead.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  But yeah, so we had to shut down. My dad started the foam business basically and focus on the soap business. It was this overwhelming time. And like 10 years later, I remember I was just like, you know, pop, you know, how'd you do it? How'd you, you know, raise a family and run a business and, you know, just going through a tough time and just remembering like, wow, how much fun we had with the foam. And so I went and built a foam unit from one of his late designs and brought it to Burning Man in 2009. And just, you know, hey, this will be fun. And like, it's sure enough, man, we were clearing out blocks of people like, what? You know, and like, just like, we're just blasting them and, you know, so that's, it was basically born at Burning Man or reborn at Burning Man.

• 50:43Rich Roll?

  But the foam kind of

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:46Rich Roll?

  in many ways is what saves the soap company. It was like the, what sustained your family and allowed you guys, allowed your dad like some, some stable income in order to right the ship with the soap company? Is that

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, saved in more ways than one, really. I mean, it was my dad's independent role for my granddad who was just kind of super intense and overbearing. And so my, you know, it was a way for my dad to just kind of, he oversaw the soap production for my granddad his whole life, but just had his own business and focus in life. And, and then, yeah, and then as far as income, right? I mean, our soap company was in bankruptcy. So absolutely the foam business was

• 51:30Rich Roll?

  So when you were a kid, what was your perspective on your grandfather?

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, he was intense and especially I think for his grandkids, he just thought it was extra important for us to download the, the moral ABC. And so it was just kind of nonstop.

• 51:46Rich Roll?

  But was your dad like pissed off?

• 51:48Speaker 01

  My dad would, he was protective of us, you know, I think, cause like, I mean, it was fine. It was just, you know, my guy was like, you know, we must unite the spaceship earth, you know, and like, you know, what's the 13th?

• 51:57Rich Roll?

  Unite spaceship earth. You weren't even here for your event. You were, you couldn't even stick around for, to raise me.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. For, it was a little triggering for my dad. Um, for me, it was just kind of like, what? You know, it's kind of sailing over my head.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  But, uh, you know, he would, he would say, you know, we expected us to memorize the, the moral ABC, but luckily he was blind. So we could pick up a, a bottle and, you know, he's like, what's the 13th? And I like, uh, he was like, oh, very good, very good. You know? Uh, but, uh, yeah, it wasn't until later that I really appreciated what my granddad was all about.

• 52:31Rich Roll?

  So I gather that you were a fairly traditional kid growing up and playing football and soccer.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:36Rich Roll?

  You know, you weren't like the hippie grateful dead kid?

• 52:39Speaker 01

  No. Um, I mean, we, you know, we're mischievous, but we're not, uh, yeah, it took a little while to, you know, really understand that dimension of society and business.

• 52:51Rich Roll?

  Right. So you're traditional. You go to Harvard, you study biology, you're playing sports, you're all American kid in many ways. Uh, but then life brings you to Amsterdam and then things begin to shift. Is that?

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:04Rich Roll?

  Accurate?

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, college was where the shift began. Um, you know, definitely, um, you, you know, like being exposed to cannabis and psychedelics initially, uh, within college context and a lot of free thinking and, and different ideas and, you know, biology, I, I was, um, You know, I was never like the most academically inclined kid and these non-interactive large lecture formats were like, you know, what, what, what am I doing here? This is wasting my time. I'll just copy the notes before the final, you know, like this is an interactive learning. And, um, and just spent a lot of time just with friends and, and especially cannabis

• 53:44Speaker 01

  was a big sacrament and kind of retired from alcohol culture and, and in some ways my, at least my athletic identity wrapped up within NCAA football and played rugby, which was a more club sport, way looser, kind of a black sheep of the athletic program, but a lot of fun. Uh huh. Um, but in some of those, um, early experiences, well, and then with mushrooms and psychedelics, an early, an early mushroom experience was, um, was, I just remember looking down at my arm, like, you know, what does it mean at a quantum level? I'm not different, like my body's not different from the world.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  And when I eat and I poop, the world's pouring into me and through me and I'm just one with it. And had the, like, my first kind of unity experience in a, not, you know, in a super overwhelming way, but just like, whoa, and just really starting to realize like the limitations of the materialistic kind of scientific worldview that would explain like human consciousness and being just as a kind of a narrow adaptive trait that, you know, in a, in a certain sense, sure, but was completely inadequate to the level of the mystery of our existence. And, um, so I was, you know, rejecting, and I had earlier rejected Christianity. I had raised Protestant, actually.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  My, um, dad wanted nothing to do with anything. My mom was Protestant. Hmm. And then, but when I was 12, I was like, well, God loved the world so much, why just send this one of my sons to just here? What about the Chinese? And, you know, and just had rejected Christianity kind of on its own terms, but then was really having a problem with this materialistic kind of science worldview. And, um, so graduated Harvard with, you know, the fair amount of.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  I mean, I was still pretty apolitical. But had started to have some important questions and and experiences. But then, yeah, Amsterdam is where the fuel kind of got.

• 55:48Rich Roll?

  So what I mean, what led you to Amsterdam? Just to just to deepen that inkling that was initiated at Harvard?

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and I mean, at the time, I mean, it's can I mean, I saw us within cannabis experience, like something really important like that. There was, you know, that we were this was a sacrament worth appreciating. Like, I mean, I knew I had not maybe the healthiest relationship at that point, but enough to know that what we're doing right here is way more important than what a lot of people are doing around us right now and like just being with each other and listening to music and laughing and being awesome. And and so, of course, Amsterdam at the time was the Mecca of cannabis culture.

• 56:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  And this is before Prop 215 is 95. So a lot of the American growers were over in Amsterdam. And so I happened to be intersect. Well, I had a Europe pass. I mean, technically, I was going to go see Europe, but we got to Amsterdam. And it was the eighth annual High Times Cup Cannabis Cup.

• 56:53Rich Roll?

  And that was no more, no more train rides. You're just there.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I went into the squat. You know, there's an incredible squat scene there, this activist artistic squat scene, all hoping also international and interesting. And I'm just like, what? This is amazing. I don't I'll go somewhere else later. I'm going to stay here and just ended up having some huge experiences, some really massive psychedelic experiences and was in a squat with, you know, multi generational, like people coming out of the counterculture. And in particular, there is a church in Arkansas of all places that had formed with cannabis as its sacrament in 93. Our church is called. And sure enough, the feds busted it up and church members were on the run facing 10 years of life.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  And a couple of them were in my squat. And that was in the context of me of these really massive psychedelic experiences that. Really exposed me to the, to the fact that somehow love and light is at the heart of this existence is absurd and tragic and hard as it can be that that is our ground of being. And, you know, meeting these people like just really waking up to America and that wow, these beautiful people, if they step back, back foot here are going to be arrested and they're thrown away. And the sacrament that helps us wake up, the drug war is in an important respect, the religious war on the sacrament of my people. And so really waking up to that,

• 58:24Speaker 01

  to that dimension. And Sam actually also was vegetarian. So that was my first, like, I remember him just, I was wide, wide open, you know, and people were coming on me and like, he's like, yeah, you know, why are you eating meat? You know, and I just remember like, just kind of going on a cannabis meditation, like, just like, yeah, okay, I got a knife. I'm in the store, I can, you know, kill that cow, or I can just chop down some, some lettuce and, you know, I think I'll just let the cow alone and

• 58:52Rich Roll?

  And that was it.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  And that was it, you know, and just like a real easy kind of, you know, I mean, it was, you know, I'm not super easy, but it was like, you know, like, okay, it's pretty clear that, and that's kind of in a way like these allies can help us when we use them intentionally, collapse distances and barriers. And so anyways, it was just reorganizing my life in a huge way, going through these huge shifts and waking up to, you know, well, what else is wrong, you know, in the world and just waking up to the collective disaster of Western consumption on the planet. You know, not just in terms of meat and animal products, but just in general,

• 59:31Speaker 01

  our rapacious rape of nature to fuel our material economy and just the total lack of consciousness.

• 59:39Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's quite a spiritual epiphany.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:42Rich Roll?

  And yeah, I don't have, I don't have direct experiences with psychedelics. I'm, I'm like, I'm a recovering alcoholic. I've been in recovery for a long time and I never experimented with psychedelics. And now I feel like that privilege has been taken away from me.

• 1:00:02Rich Roll?

  So I won't have that experience, but I can't deny that I know a number of people like yourself who've had very profound experiences with these substances.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:17Rich Roll?

  And, and it's been not just life-changing, but like determinative of the trajectory that you then choose to pursue for the rest of your life. Like those experiences inform in many ways, because at that time, it wasn't like you were going into the soap business, right? You didn't want anything to do with that.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, in fact, my relevant realization over there was like, I don't have to do anything as far as my family or anything. I can grow plants and, and live, you know, and just fight this cause. And that's what I did. I came back, sold all my stuff and announced to my parents that I'm going to Amsterdam and grow plants. I mean, everyone needs to stand up against this unjust, you know, religious war. And I'm vegan, which they were like way more upset about than the.

• 1:01:01Rich Roll?

  Oh, really? That was the thing they couldn't handle that? Oh, wow.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  This is crazy.

• 1:01:06Rich Roll?

  But it's amazing, you like tapped, you tapped a vein that, you know, your grandfather was dialed into, right? It's almost like you opened yourself up to a, a, a level of consciousness that was vibrating, you know, where he happened to be sitting. And you have this like all, you know, all one awareness, this unity consciousness that kind of overcomes you. And you have this sense of connectedness that then like protracting out into everything that you've done since infuses everything. Like sustainability is about connectedness. It's about a holistic perspective of the impact that we're having on the soil and the downstream, you know, implications of all of these decisions that we make.

• 1:01:49Rich Roll?

  It's not just organic or vegan or non-vegan. Like we have to broaden that aperture and realize the cascading implications of, of how all of these things are interrelated in a more, in a broader and more holistic way. And that sensibility, like the experience you related about, you know, pooping in the world kind of going through you is a, is like a micro example of the macro being the sustainability implications of how. You know, we raise food to feed humans on planet Earth.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, absolutely. Right. And just like how that, yeah, and in taking responsibility for your, your plate as a farm is your section of the garden out in the world, you know, what does it look like? And when you're being unconscious about what you're eating, you know, you're just creating a disaster. You know, just animals being treated abysmally and being fed crops grown in a completely unsustainable way. But when you like

• 1:02:47Rich Roll?

  By workers who are being unfairly treated.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, it's just totally and then but the solution's right there, too. I mean, if you just are conscious about it and like, okay, I want to know who's growing my food. And is it being done right? And if I'm going to eat an animal product, is it from a pasture based system? Or the animal lived a life worth living, you know, and you know, you can start to make a shift by taking responsibility with your food choice.

• 1:03:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and embodying your grandfather's ethos and sensibility of using commerce as a form of activism. Like soap to him was a means of delivering a message. And you've really done the same thing, but just done it in a more fiscally responsible way.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's all, I mean, it is, it is all cycles of energy and, and you know, just in our soaps, like food on a plate, you know, it's all agricultural based and like us taking responsibility for our supply chains and making sure all the farmers are being paid a fair price and are growing our coconuts and olives and totally righteous ways. Palm is a real important one.

• 1:03:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, when you say palm oil, like alarm bells go off. Because it's the it's the number one offender when it comes to rapacious, you know, rainforest, you know, de-evolution.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, we also use hemp seed oil and, you know, hemp has this reputation as being like the wonder crop that'll save humanity and palm has the reputation as like, you know, the evil, most vile crop that'll take us, you know, right off the cliff edge. And the reality is, is that it's The the issue is how do we grow our crops, whether it's palm or hemp? It's the method of how we do it. It's not what the crop is. And palm is actually the highest per acre yielding oil crop. And can be done in a totally regenerative, organic, sustainable way. Unfortunately, what's happening is in like a lot of our commodity crops are being they're clear cutting rainforest,

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  ripping up wetlands, dislocating communities, eliminating orangutan habitat in Borneo and Indonesia especially. But you know, soy plantations are ripping up the, you know, Amazon. And so it's just in either case, like, you know, how do we grow these crops in a regenerative way? And so with palm oil, like we're like, and like every company ever, we're we were buying from brokers and we had no visibility. We were buying on the commodity market. It's like, who's got the cheapest coconut oil that meets our spec, you know? And that's how everyone.

• 1:05:21Rich Roll?

  You don't even know where it comes from.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  You have no idea, right? And so that's the problem. You just have this race to the bottom in the world. So we said, okay, we want to know who the farming communities are and just make sure that they're doing it correctly. And and then go to market and partnership with them. So in the case of palm oil, we identified a really cool project in Ghana, where smallholder farmers not farming more than two to five acres each are are growing palm and are intercropping with banana and cassava and a kind of a rich farm ecosystem. And there's plenty of wild biodiversity habitat for wildlife. So, so, yeah, so, you know, the palm is an especially important one, obviously, given the concern

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  with when it's not done that way, it's generally done in the worst possible.

• 1:06:09Rich Roll?

  And they're able to meet your your demand and do it in a predictable way? That allows you to, you know, basically run your business fluidly?

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so at this point, yes, but it's been a whole adventure getting there. And we do have some kind of next best suppliers that are doing a really good job. There's Agro Palma is a really good entity in Brazil. And they're doing a really good job. It's not smallholder, but they're doing a pretty good job as far as when it comes to palm. There's another project in Ecuador called Natural Habitats. And they're doing a pretty good job. But I mean, we do the best job. And so we're we're. Basically, at this point, supplying all of our own demand.

• 1:06:55Rich Roll?

  Right, and you're getting your olive oil from both Palestine and Israel?

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, so ninety percent from the West Bank, from Palestinian farmers in the West Bank, who are basically farming regeneratively by default, and have been facing really difficult circumstances bringing their olive oil to market, even local markets for a while there, just under the occupation.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  And so, we, I did a Google search for fair trade olive oil, and the only thing that came up was Canaan and the West Bank. And I was like, wow, okay, that's intense. But, uh, but they're a beautiful, beautiful project founded by this guy, Nasu Abu Farah, who was a professor of anthropology at University of Wisconsin at Madison, had a coffee house, folk, kind of folk singing, Center for the Arts kind of vibe, and took the fair trade idea that emerged out of coffee and cocoa, and applied it to olives, to his farmers back home. And then, so we partnered with him, but then to be clear, we're not being anti-Israel about that.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  We do ten percent from the Israeli side, half from a Jewish family farm that happens to be related to us, like five generations back, and then half from a Christian Arab Israeli project in the Nazareth region. So all of those Muslim, Jewish, Christian.

• 1:08:17Rich Roll?

  Right, which perfectly, you know, fuses with your grandfather's vision and the spiritual principles that underpin the whole enterprise.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like amazing. Pretty beautiful, yeah.

• 1:08:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so how do you, well, two things. First of all, as, you know, as somebody for whom sustainability is top of mind and a huge priority, I have to ask the question, like, if you're importing all of these, you know, products from all over the world, there's a, you know, there's a carbon implication to that. Do you try to offset that, or how do you think about, or, you know, manage that aspect of the business?

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, in the case of soap, especially for liquid soap.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  We're limited to using what's called hyaluric oils and these are shorter chain saturated fats. So all fats and oils are chemically triglycerides. So whether it's beef fat or coconut oil, it's all glycerin backbone with three fatty acids. And how long those fatty acids are and how many double bonds are in them makes the different characteristics of different fats and oils. So in a case of soap, your, your high lather, good hard water soap comes from shorter saturated oils. And that basically means coconut and palm kernel oil. Those are the main, main sources. So we're, we, we need to be involved in the tropics for those raw materials. And then olive oil, obviously, we could be sourcing here from California.

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  But, you know, I think, you know, in the hierarchy of value, we're, we're just super psyched by the fair trade project going on in, in Palestine and Israel and the Holy Land. So we're going to continue with that, but we are

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  embarked right now on a scope three emission audit and like basically taking responsibility for all the emissions involved at every aspect of our business. You know, all the freight, all the everything. And then instead of investing in offsets, we're, we're pioneering this movement called insetting, which in, within our own supply chains, within our own agricultural supply chains, regenerative organic methods like composting and returning biomass to the soil, you're actually can sequester carbon in the soil. And in fact, soil is the largest land-based carbon sink. And if we were to adopt regenerative organic methods at global scale,

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  we could mitigate and bring down something like a third of excess atmospheric carbon back into the soil. A, a, a lot of the carbon up in the atmosphere is from mismanaged soils. It's from all the life that's been destroyed and killed. It's been oxidized the atmosphere, but when you bring that soil back to life and are, you know, enriching it with carbon-rich compost and inputs, you can start to build that carbon back up, bring that life back and, and that carbon. So we're in a, we're basically. Insetting our our carbon through through these practices in our own agricultural supply chains.

• 1:11:23Rich Roll?

  That's super cool. And meanwhile, like you guys are solar powered and.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're solar and yeah, and that's it. I mean, we need to decarbonize our economy and go green. But, you know, we have this huge legacy load of excess atmosphere, carbon dioxide. And and that's where regenerative organic is like the soil. I mean, obviously, there's all these high tech solutions of taking carbon out of air. But I mean, if we just farm correctly, we can put a lot of it back into the soil.

• 1:11:56Rich Roll?

  Well, there's a lot of lip service given to, you know, the idea of conscious capitalism. But this is bred into the very DNA of everything that you guys do. And I'm wondering whether at some point along this journey, when you start to take things like fair trade and making sure that you're sourcing from these regen, you know, farms, I would imagine that's driving your price point up. There had to be people saying, you're insane, like you're going to go out of business. If you try to adhere to this level of integrity, you're going to price yourself just right out of the market. And there's no way like if you're if you're interested in sustainability, we should make sure the business is sustainable first.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I mean, that, you know, without generating profits and healthy margins, we're nowhere and we can't support any of the other causes. And, you know, and we do cap our family salaries at five to one and all the profits.

• 1:12:50Rich Roll?

  Well, how long you been doing that?

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  Since 20 years, oh, no, 15 years.

• 1:12:56Rich Roll?

  15 years. So basically, the highest paid person at the company can't make more than five times the amount of salary, the lowest of paid.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, you know, we could see early on kind of what was happening. And, you know, I was like, I felt well, within that five to one, we can have a lot of fun, you know, and and then just as like a good.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  Just a good cutoff.

• 1:13:18Rich Roll?

  Right. And in a world of CEO, you know, compensation packages that are completely insane and out of whack, that's a refreshing breath of fresh air.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and that, you know, you can just do so much good with, you know, not that much money if you're really focused on deploying it correctly and know the people, you know, like closely involved in the causes like we are. I mean, we really care about them. They're not cause marketing for us. Like we, we really want to shift the world.

• 1:13:48Rich Roll?

  That's the differentiator. I, you know, I feel like there's so many companies out there now who know they have to play in this sandbox a little bit, especially with the coming of age of millennials who are concerned about these sorts of, you know, save the world type issues. They want to patronize companies that are doing good and giving back. But most, the vast majority of companies who are quote unquote giving back are doing it in a very perfunctory way, like, oh, we'll give you 1% of, to this or whatever. But it's not really part of the identity or like I said earlier, like the, the fabric, the DNA of the company. There's a different, there's a difference.

• 1:14:28Rich Roll?

  Like this is what you guys do. Like the company exists so that you can support these causes. I feel like.

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  That's right. And that's, and that was when I came in and decided that I did want to run Bronner's and you had gone through an evolution of like, wow, I finally understand what my granddad's all about.

• 1:14:45Rich Roll?

  We didn't get to the part of you coming back from Amsterdam and deciding you're going to be a soap dude.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. But you know, but you kind of got it with, you know, like, okay, I got to the plane where my granddad was and totally, whoa, you're right on it. You're a hundred percent correct. We do live in a spiritual mystery. There is love and light at the heart of all these faith traditions. And if they don't take themselves literally and make idols out of their beliefs and symbols and let them be open and fluid, like, yeah, they're, they're all pointing at this kind of mystery. And, and finally understood what my granddad was all about. And took a little while to fully embrace, uh, coming back to work for my dad. Um, but became a mental health counselor in the Boston area for a while. And was, did paranoid schizophrenic counseling and.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  But in the course of this, did a lot of journaling and just realized if a company like Dr. Bronner's were to offer me a job, I'd go for it in a second. This is incredible.

• 1:15:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  And

• 1:15:42Rich Roll?

  And was your brother working for the company at the time?

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  No, he, in a similar way, he graduated Brown and went to teach English in Japan. And he didn't, so, so I let my dad know shortly after my,

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  Dr. Bronner died in March 7th of 97, the same day our daughter Maya was born. So this is a very intense day.

• 1:16:06Rich Roll?

  Wait, hold on a second.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:08Rich Roll?

  Your daughter was born on the same day your grandfather died?

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, same, same exact day, March 7th of 97.

• 1:16:15Rich Roll?

  Holy shit.

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  And I was reading a book by this guy Rudyard, Rudyard, I forget his last name, but he's,

• 1:16:22Rich Roll?

  Kipling?

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  No, he was like an astrologer, kind of young and astrologer cat, and he wrote this book called The Planetarization of Consciousness. And I just remember that that was the book I was reading, you know, and

• 1:16:35Rich Roll?

  On that day?

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  On that day, and, you know, which was my granddad's whole

• 1:16:39Rich Roll?

  What was going on astrologically on that day?

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  I don't know, man.

• 1:16:42Rich Roll?

  Some kind of convergence of, you know, celestial bodies?

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you know, and for me, you know, I, I don't, yeah, I don't put like literalness into like necessarily any given constellation context, but I think in general as a symbolic language of the soul and deeper currents that we live and breathe in, I like respected and,

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  yeah, but that was a big, huge day. And shortly thereafter, let my dad know I was ready to come into the company. And then shortly after that, he was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and given him six months to live. But which he, he lived for 12 months. He was, he lived to see his daughter, married to my brother-in-law, Michael, who's now our chief of operations. My sister Lisa's rad. She's got a blog called Going Green with a Bronner Mom.

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  And our dad, you know, just really downloaded the ropes. And

• 1:17:38Rich Roll?

  Trains you up.

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we're, you know, had to shut down his foam company to just concentrate on the soap. But was it, I then, within the next couple of years convinced my brother, like, hey, Mike, you gotta come back, dude. This is nuts. And I'm not like I was. He had the same blocks I did, working for my dad as working for, with his brother. And, you know, I assured him, like, I'm way better.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:05Rich Roll?

  I've seen the light, man.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:07Rich Roll?

  The all in one vision. It's happening.

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, he's like, what? No, yeah. So he, and he's now, we're now

• 1:18:15Rich Roll?

  He kind of handles the business end of it, right? And you're, you're, you're like, you, you can like be the cosmic engagement officer and, you know.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, we, um, like my brother would say, like, we're eighty five, ninety percent the same, you know? Um, the, like, we, we share a lot of the similar passions and inclinations and, um, but yeah, he's, he's a bit more pragmatic. I'm a little more cosmic. Um, and I definitely geared up the activist side of the, of the enterprise. And he's really, especially focused internationally. He's really built us out internationally. But, um, he's now president and, uh, we're fifty fifty in the company. Um, and yeah, just total partners and, um.

• 1:19:00Rich Roll?

  So what's, uh, what's the future, man? What's the future for Bronner's? What's the future for, what's the, what's the, what, what is the forecast for planet Earth? From your perspective?

• 1:19:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, well, you know, I'm optimistic that, you know, that the different strategies in place, like if, if we do, if we dramatically reduce the amount of meat we're eating, if we shift our agriculture and one third of the earth's surface to a sustainable, regenerative, organic management. Uh, if we decarbonize the economy, you know, integrate these psychedelic allies and you know, and to your point like that there's, there's ways to misuse these allies and all that they often are, but in a medicine practice to look at, okay, we've got a meditation practice and then a medicine practice that Albert Hoffman, who discovered LSD, he saw

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  LSD as an adjunct to meditated practice and, and, um, and the founder of AA, Bill Wilson, saw LSD.

• 1:20:00Rich Roll?

  Famously dabbled in LSD.

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, as, as, as potential ways of interrupting habitual forms of thought and patterns of behavior. And, um, um, so anyways, so, so I'm optimistic with all these things.

• 1:20:13Rich Roll?

  Well, I would just, just to interject, um, I don't want to interrupt your fluidity of thought, but what's interesting about you is that you're somebody who's been ahead of the curve, much like your grandfather. I mean, your grandfather was way ahead of things, right?

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:30Rich Roll?

  You're like slightly ahead of things because you, I mean, you're, are you the person who was behind the initiative at Bronner's to be the first company to really start working with hemp? Like as soon as it became, well, you kind of were doing it before it was quote un, like technically legal, right? And there was lawsuits.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, totally.

• 1:20:47Rich Roll?

  prevailing over.

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was an activist.

• 1:20:49Rich Roll?

  Now it's all good, but like to have hemp in your product was kind of a radical thing.

• 1:20:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:54Rich Roll?

  Not that long ago.

• 1:20:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:55Rich Roll?

  Right? So you were kind of initiated that whole thing. Um, and also you were talking about like microdosing and things like that, like before it became like a Silicon Valley, you know, hipster thing to do.

• 1:21:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, absolutely, man. Yeah.

• 1:21:12Rich Roll?

  Driving the grandfather's legacy forward.

• 1:21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, and that's, yeah, right on, man. I mean, that's when I came in the company was like, I'm, we're going to run this like my granddad did. This is an activist engine to make the world better and. That's what we're mostly here to do.

• 1:21:28Rich Roll?

  It's crazy what's going on with hemp now.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you know, it was such a long hard slog there for 20 years and now the tide has finally turned. And, um, you know, back in the day, like when we first put into hemp seed oil in our soaps, yeah, it was a huge deal.

• 1:21:43Rich Roll?

  Right. People thought they were going to test positive at work and all kinds of stuff, right?

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:48Rich Roll?

  And you all, you've been in a bunch of lawsuits over similar kinds of spats, right? With the USDA and.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so first we went to the mat with DEA, like after Bush came in and nine 11, there was the DOJ went nuts. Department of Justice went nuts on medical marijuana, industrial hemp and, um, and Oregon's euthanasia law, which is interesting because there's a much, there's a ballot measure in Oregon to legalize medical therapeutic use of mushrooms. Um, and definitely psilocybin, the active ingredient has been found to be really beneficial for end of life anxiety. Like that's one of the big breakthrough areas, like just helping people reconcile to the dying process is part of a larger life, you know, mystery and, and, um,

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  and, uh, but anyways, like the DOJ was going nuts on all, all these different kind of progressive movements. And so we got in a big fight, uh, to preserve industrial hemp seed oil, uh, imports back in 2001, which you ultimately won in 2004. And then fast forward to today, um, Kentucky was really the big shift with tobacco going down the tubes. And it's been the historical hemp heartland. Um, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, has been our number one champion in Congress for the last four years.

• 1:23:06Rich Roll?

  So weird.

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:07Rich Roll?

  And like John Boehner works for a cannabis company now.

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:11Rich Roll?

  Like, what kind of weird bizarre universe do we live in?

• 1:23:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:15Rich Roll?

  Those things are happening.

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  No, totally. And that's, yeah, I mean, it's incredible. So, um, so yeah, so I think, um, it's just, so I was just in DC celebrating our big victory and it was, it's awesome, but we're, we're moving on and like one of the, what the, the, the joke I would never answer a journalist who would call me 20 years ago, like, oh, isn't hemp a stalking horse for marijuana? Like, you know, aren't you just opening up cultural space to reform cannabis generally? And of course, the answer was always like, no, like, we're focused on, on industrial hemp for seed and fiber and omega threes lacking in the American diet and, you know, hemp fibers, it's amazing for textiles and clothing and, and it's an amazing, sustainable

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  crop, grows like a weed, you don't need a lot of synthetic pesticides and fertility. But, uh, the joke was like, no, get it right. This is about LSD. And so the, the end game, you know?

• 1:24:09Rich Roll?

  That's what you're England for.

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, just, just integration of all these allies into, into the culture and, to help us care about and give a shit in the first place about the problems and, and, and care enough to engage and solve them.

• 1:24:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, I think we're at an inflection point with all of these issues. Uh, you know, the historical, uh, trajectory of hemp is so, we could do a whole podcast on that alone with everything that William Randolph Hearst did to prevent that from, you know, being a staple of American daily life, um, because of his investments in paper and Henry Ford and his hemp cart. Like, there's a whole bunch of amazing stories that, that come out of that, but we're kind of past that now. We've overcome that hurdle. And then we have people like Michael Pollan writing books about psychedelic experiences. We have Johns Hopkins and various other, you know, organizations pouring a lot of money into scientific research on the implications of whether it's microdosing

• 1:25:07Rich Roll?

  or psilocybin or other psychoactive compounds on everything from depression to all manner of mental health, PTSD, et cetera. So it's very interesting times. And, you know, you've forecasted a lot of this. We're now living in this, we're kind of in this in-between phase, I think, but I think it's inevitable that we're heading in the direction that, that you foresee. When it comes to food and agriculture and soil.

• 1:25:34Rich Roll?

  I too am optimistic, but and I've said this before, I feel like there is an arms race afoot. Like, we have people like yourselves and there is a massive grassroots movement and a growing population of activist consumers who are concerned about these things and the future of the planet for ourselves and future generations who are patronizing companies that are trying to do good like yours. But that's butting up against, like we said earlier, you know, the growing populations across the planet, not just in America, and this massive increasing demand for the products of animal agriculture and the rapacious, you know, practices that go into producing those.

• 1:26:19Rich Roll?

  So who is going to win? Are we going to be able to significantly elevate our collective consciousness to the point that we can combat, you know, what ails us? Or is the dark force going to prevail?

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, yeah, man.

• 1:26:35Rich Roll?

  You know, it's Star Wars, man, is what it is.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, absolutely, man. And actually, I was in an ibogaine experience with a buddy. And ibogaine is, has great promise for opiate addiction in particular. It's this really powerful African root, psychedelic, and in Black Panther, they kind of allude to, allude to it a little bit, the medicine in that movie that where you hit the ancestral plane and

• 1:27:03Rich Roll?

  That's not ayahuasca?

• 1:27:04Speaker 01

  No, it's an iboga, so iboga, iboga. So it's another arguably even, even more intense plant psychedelic ally. But within this vision I had, like, I saw my grand over here and like the planet Earth and all the life artists and activists fighting the machine and Trump and all the, you know, are we going to win? And you know, feeling like forces, other dimensional forces plugging in to help, you know, from who knows what. And then at a certain point, golden light like breaks out on the earth, you know, it was, you know, peace on earth, packs and beautiful.

• 1:27:41Rich Roll?

  All right, well, I will adopt, I will hold that energy frequency for the future of humanity.

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, hopefully, man. Yeah.

• 1:27:51Rich Roll?

  Good. Well, I think that's a good place to close it down, dude.

• 1:27:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, right on. Yeah, I think so.

• 1:27:56Rich Roll?

  That was awesome, man. Thank you so much. I love that, dude. Thank you.

• 1:28:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:01Rich Roll?

  Very cool. I would say, I say with, with a fair amount of certitude that after listening to this podcast, when you go to the store and you see that Dr. Bronner soap, you're gonna, you're gonna look at it differently for the rest of your life. After hearing this conversation, you're always gonna think back to what we talked about.

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:28:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  Dude, that's even crazier than I thought.

• 1:28:25Rich Roll?

  I know, man. So what's, what's, what's, what's up with you? Like, do you, do you ever like, I always like to close it down, like with people connect with your message? Is there, how do they best connect with you? Do you ever do public talks? I know you go to Washington and you do protests and all this activist stuff. If somebody wants to get on your wavelength, like, what's the best way for them to do that?

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I guess I could give out my email.

• 1:28:55Rich Roll?

  Ooh, careful. Sure you wanna do that?

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  No, I don't know.

• 1:28:57Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 1:28:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, the legendary Rich Roll.

• 1:29:00Rich Roll?

  I don't think you.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  Fan weirdos.

• 1:29:02Rich Roll?

  You might get a few emails, that's all.

• 1:29:05Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 1:29:06Rich Roll?

  Nice people.

• 1:29:06Speaker 01

  Oh, I know. Yeah. Well, I am often, I guess, speaking at different regenerative organic farming conferences and cannabis, we're launching Brother David's, or I should be very clear, this has nothing to do with Dr. Bronner's, my family, but Brother David's regenerative cannabis flower line and be hitting a lot of the cannabis trade shows. And that's to promote the small family farmed, outdoor, correctly grown medicine. And it's a nonprofit venture to bring all profits back to benefit, you know, not because cannabis, unfortunately, there's these huge corporate indoor grows that are dominating, very energy and chemical intensive. So, yeah, I guess I'm out and about at different

• 1:29:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  trade shows and talking and. But you can call up the number on Dr. Bronner's and you can totally reach me by email. I won't give out my personal.

• 1:29:59Rich Roll?

  Oh, really?

• 1:30:00Speaker 01

  But yeah, like.

• 1:30:01Rich Roll?

  So somebody's determined to get in touch with you.

• 1:30:03Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. No, I will totally personally answer any sincere, sweet note.

• 1:30:08Rich Roll?

  And here's something.

• 1:30:09Speaker 01

  Even if it's not sweet, if it's got good points.

• 1:30:12Rich Roll?

  All right, man. So you could do that. And as a final kind of thing, as a takeaway for people that are listening to this, I feel like even if you're the most well-intentioned and fairly adequately informed consumer, when you go to the grocery store, the market, whatever, you see all of these labels on various products and it's confusing for the most intelligent among us. Like, what do these labels really mean? Does organic really mean what I think it means? What does cage-free mean? What does grass-fed mean? Does that really mean that these cows are having amazing lives? There's so many labels and I know for myself, I've lost confidence in

• 1:30:58Rich Roll?

  in the idea that, you know, they actually live up to the sort of, you know, promise. And I know in many ways they don't, but you're somebody who's really looked at this. So for somebody who is listening to this, like, what are the labels they really need to pay attention to? And what should they know about like truth versus fiction when it comes to these things?

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, and you alluded to some of our litigation. I mean, we did litigate against a lot of what we called organic cheater brands in the personal care space.

• 1:31:27Rich Roll?

  Right. Like, yeah, because that it'd been so commodified and watered down.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was meaningless.

• 1:31:32Rich Roll?

  You could buy your way into it, essentially.

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  Totally. So the more, I would say, meaningful certifications. Well, first and foremost is regenerative organic certified. It's not yet in the market. We're in our pilot phase this year. But if you go to regenorganic.com, you can kind of learn more about what the standard is.

• 1:31:53Rich Roll?

  Do they have a list of products there that adhere to that?

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  Well, unfortunately, there's none at this point in the market, but you can get on the mailing list and then, but what we did with Regen Organic is take, okay, what are the top animal welfare pasture based standards? So that would be your GAP4. So Global Animal Partnership, that's got that ranking and Whole Foods. So 1, 2, 3 are pretty not super meaningful, but at GAP4, that's when it gets pretty meaningful. So if you are going to choose to eat meat or dairy, look for GAP4 or above. And then Animal Welfare Approved is pretty much the highest animal welfare certification. Certified Humane Pasture, Certified Humane

• 1:32:37Speaker 01

  in and of itself is a little not as strong, but if it is a pasture claim with Certified Humane certification, that's pretty meaningful. On the Fair Labor side, Fair for Life, that's our certifier. We believe that's got a lot of integrity. Yeah, and Fair for Life. And you know, there's other.

• 1:32:59Rich Roll?

  That ensures fair wages, adequate working conditions.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, gender equity. And we actually pay into a fair trade fund on materials and labor that helps with community development projects. So sanitation, like clean water wells, or school books for kids, or defibrillator for the hospital. So fair trade certification's good. And I mean, the big, the big one here is Fair Trade USA. And I have my issues there, but you know, there's a lot of really good products and brands certified by them. And then on soil health, you know, obviously biodynamic, Endemeter is really good. And organic, USD Organic, I mean, you just got to know your brand. You know, there's a big

• 1:33:45Speaker 01

  spectrum in there. And that's what we're hoping to do with Regenerative Organic. It's just really, here's your single trustworthy seal that on all these ones, you can just trust.

• 1:33:54Rich Roll?

  And what are the, what are the barriers that you're facing in terms of just adoption?

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  Um, well, it's gonna be obviously consumer education and breaking through all the noise. Um, but we have partners like Patagonia and I think, um, we've got a good list roster of brands. And I think ultimately you gotta kind of do your research on a given brand. But, um, you know, like the Guaya, like Guayaquil is a big ally for us and they do yerba mate.

• 1:34:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  And, you know, and that's like, do you, do you research them? You're like, wow, this couldn't be more awesome, you know? And they're, they're helping preserve rainforest and supporting the Guayaquil tribe and, um.

• 1:34:36Rich Roll?

  And that, that certification could apply to cotton garments and the like, right?

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so Patagonia's, um, got some pretty good stuff. Um, you know, they're similar in that they've got, you know, certified cotton, certified rubber for their wetsuits. Um, they're, they're doing some really deep work into their supply chains.

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  And I think that's part of what is, is knowing the brands and you can see in our pilot, like we do have Guayaquil and Numi and some really good brands that are really going that extra mile. And I would say that, yeah, certification is, um, is, um, is good to look for, but ultimately you need to do your research on the brand and just figure out, you know, really get a feel for them.

• 1:35:23Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:35:23Speaker 01

  And like, how committed are they? Like, is it, okay, they got like, uh, one or two fair trade products, but the rest of their portfolio or product or brand portfolio is like weak, um, versus complete commitment.

• 1:35:36Rich Roll?

  How do you know when you're looking at these products and trying to evaluate them, when you're getting fucked with? Cause I'm sure there's a lot of marketing doublespeak and obfuscation, you know? Trying to make people think that they're buying something that is.

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, man.

• 1:35:51Rich Roll?

  Environmentally, you know, comports with all the things you're talking about, but doesn't actually.

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, reading an ingredient text, um, is, is key. And, you know, simple language you can pronounce on a cosmetic, obviously, if you can't pronounce it, it's probably doesn't belong on your skin.

• 1:36:10Speaker 01

  And, uh, you know, obviously that'll contradict whatever green claims are being made. If you're like, uh, what's this seven syllable chemical name, you know? And it's like, well, yeah, that's, that's a big flag.

• 1:36:20Rich Roll?

  Probably not.

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:22Rich Roll?

  Well, I think there's this sense that, that. If you're buying something at this store, then it must be fine.

• 1:36:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:36:31Rich Roll?

  I'm friends with this woman, Greg Renfrew, who has a company called Beauty Counter. She created this, basically this gigantic company, cosmetics company, initially for women,

• 1:36:44Rich Roll?

  with beauty products that are all like legitimately all natural, without all the chemicals. Because she was horrified to discover that all these products that she thought were nat- you know, quote unquote, natural really weren't.

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, there's no

• 1:36:58Rich Roll?

  toxins. Because you just think like, well, it must be okay. I got it at the nice, the Sephora or whatever.

• 1:37:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:37:04Rich Roll?

  And you realize like, yeah, it's very far from the case.

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, there's no regulations.

• 1:37:09Rich Roll?

  The onus is on you as the consumer to really be educated about these things.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's buyer beware, basically. And that, but yeah, reading an ingredient deck, if you, you know, it should look like a food, like you're, you're putting food on your skin. And if it reads different, then that's, that's a problem.

• 1:37:25Rich Roll?

  The biggest organ on your body, man.

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:37:29Rich Roll?

  So what's your favorite use of, of your product, other than as, you know, a typical soap? Like of, of all the uses.

• 1:37:38Speaker 01

  Well, firefighting foam, well, blasting foam.

• 1:37:41Rich Roll?

  So what do I have to do to get the foam truck to come to my house?

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  Oh, no, well, next time we're around, we'll just come by and do it. Yeah, throw a really big party.

• 1:37:50Rich Roll?

  Okay, good. Cool, man. Uh, thank you so much. Uh, next time you have some big initiative or some, something going on, come back and talk to me, man. I really enjoyed this.

• 1:38:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, right on. Thank you for having me. It's been awesome.

• 1:38:03Rich Roll?

  I appreciate, I appreciate what you're doing. And I think it, it's proof that you can run a company with this higher sense of purpose and this call to service, uh, and do it in a financially, not just viable way, but in a profitable way. The, the manner in which you have grown this company to prominence is, I mean, they should be teaching this at Harvard Business School. It's incredible what you guys have built. And you've done it on principle with integrity, and that's to be commended. And I hope more companies out there can model their DNA off, you know, what you guys have established and created.

• 1:38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, right on. Thank you. And yeah, and there are other companies that have inspired us, you know, like the Guay Keys of the world. And yeah, and hopefully it's a virtuous cycle and others will.

• 1:38:54Rich Roll?

  In turn be inspired. Yeah, man. It's the all one vision, brother. Bam. Unity of love. All right, man. Peace. Peace. Thanks. Bam.

• 1:39:05Rich Roll?

  That David Bronner is a trip, isn't he? Hope you enjoyed that journey down the spiritual psychedelic and organic rabbit hole. If you want to learn more about Dr. Bronner's soap, go to drbronner.com, D R Bronner dot com. You can hit David up on Twitter or Instagram at D R Bronner. And I wanted to make a quick announcement about this really cool documentary that these guys just created. It's called Journey to Pavatramenth. I think that's how you say it. And it's this beautiful look at organic regenerative farming practices in rural India, the farms that actually supply Dr. Bronner with the organic mint oil that they use in

• 1:39:51Rich Roll?

  their peppermint soaps. It's all about soil fertility. It's about climate change. I really implore everybody to check it out and you can find it at drbronner.com/journey. Quick announcement that there's still time to take advantage of our sale on our Plant Power Meal Planner, $20 off an annual subscription when you use the code POWER20 at checkout through April 13. When you sign up at meals.ritual.com, you'll get access to thousands of nutritious, easy to prepare, totally customized, plant-based recipes. You get unlimited grocery lists. You get grocery delivery in most metropolitan areas and you get access to a team of expert nutrition coaches on the ready, seven days a week to answer all of your questions.

• 1:40:34Rich Roll?

  To learn more and to sign up, go to meals.ritual.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the podcast, there are a couple of simple ways to do just that. Just tell your friends about it when you're at a dinner party or just across the breakfast table. Take a screen grab of the episode you're listening to, share it on social media. I love that. Tag me so I can share it myself. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on YouTube, on Spotify, wherever you listen. To your fine podcast content, leave a review on Apple Podcasts and you can support us on Patreon at ritual.com/donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today, Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music,

• 1:41:18Rich Roll?

  Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for their magic creating the video version of the podcast and editing it for YouTube, Jessica Miranda for her beautiful graphics, DK David Kahn, my man, hashtag DK Goals for advertiser relationships and theme music as always by Analemma. Thank you for the love, you guys. I don't take your attention for granted. I really appreciate your listenership and I'll see you back here in a couple of days with an amazing conversation with Kevin Smith. Yes, that Kevin Smith, the Silent Bob guy, the Clerks guy, the Mallrats guy, that Kevin Smith is stopping by to share his transformation experience in the wake of suffering, a near fatal heart attack. It's an amazing story.

• 1:42:01Rich Roll?

  You're not going to want to miss it. Until then, remember, we are all one. Unity, people. Peace. Plants. Namaste.