#290 Zach Lahn - Inside America’s Cancer-Causing Chemical Problem

Zach Lahn is a first-time political candidate running in the 2026 Republican primary for Governor of Iowa. Never having held elected office, he launched his campaign from his family farm, positioning himself as a self-funded outsider independent of party leadership and corporate donors. His candidacy is rooted in a belief that Iowa needs leadership grounded in rural life rather than professional politics. Lahn’s platform is socially conservative and economically populist, with a strong focus on agriculture and land ownership. He opposes foreign and corporate control of Iowa farmland and advocates for family farms over large agribusiness monopolies. Economically, he is critical of corporate consolidation and globalism, supporting antitrust action and policies that favor small businesses. On social issues, Lahn is anti-abortion, opposes gender-affirming medical procedures for minors, and emphasizes traditional family structures and parental control in education. He also runs on a tough-on-crime platform, with a focus on fentanyl trafficking and strong support for law enforcement. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Get 30% off your first subscription order at https://armra.com/srs with code SRS. Find your forever cookware @hexclad and get 10% off at https://hexclad.com/srs! #hexcladpartner Go to https://helixsleep.com/srs for 20% off sitewide. Go to https://shopbeam.com/SRS, use code SRS. With my code SRS, you can grab Dream for 50% off. Zach Lahn Links: Web - https://zachlahn.com FB - https://www.facebook.com/ZachLahn X - https://x.com/ZachLahn 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:04Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I got a, I got a little question for you before we get going that doesn't really relate to what we're talking to, but I just want to knock it out. The USDA says the average US farmer is 58.1 years old. And in Iowa, the average producer is 57.6. VICE's tractor hacking coverage on farmers fighting repair restrictions went viral with a related VICE YouTube video servicing at about 13 million views. I had no idea people are that concerned about this. This sounds like, I had a conversation about this exact thing with Secretary Driscoll about right to repair for our military. I didn't even know this was going on in the farming communities. Here's some, here's some points.

• 1:47Shawn Ryan?

  Producers under 35 nationally, 296,480. 9% of all producers. That's not, that's not good. Just context for the audience, that's, that's the up and coming generation. Yeah. Iowa producers under 35? 15,782.

• 2:08Shawn Ryan?

  The FTC sued Deere in 2025 over repair restriction allegations. And Reuters reported a judge let that antitrust suit proceed. Deere has denied any wrongdoing. What do you say to the next generation of farmers watching their parents work 16-hour days to buy farm equipment and they still feel like they don't control what they actually own? Are you dealing with this on your farm?

• 2:34Speaker 03

  You know, we don't use, I use more legacy equipment, older equipment, partially for this exact reason. But what I'd say to producers, especially young ones, is I think what they need to understand is this is being done on purpose. They're doing this on purpose. And what I mean by that is that, you know, my whole life, every politician I've ever met has said, we have to support farmers, we have to support farmers. And everything's gotten worse for the actual producer. And so if you actually look at the past 10 years and what the agribusiness lobby has spent in Washington DC, it's about a one and a half billion dollars in the past 10

• 3:18Speaker 03

  years lobbying Congress. The top five companies during that same time have made about 150 billion dollars in profit. In the same time, we've lost 100,000 farms.

• 3:30Shawn Ryan?

  100,000 farms?

• 3:32Speaker 03

  100,000, family farms. So who are they lobbying for? It's not the farmer. It's not the producer. This is something that sometimes is difficult to bring up because, you know, right now, Bobby Kennedy is really fighting against like big food, for instance. And I've been told by people that taking on the fight that I'm taking on with big agriculture is much more difficult. And there's a reason for that. And the reason is, big agriculture has created a caricature out of farming. And they're pretending to be the people that are defending the heritage of our farmers. But actually, they're the ones extracting every dollar of wealth out of our farms that

• 4:17Speaker 03

  they possibly can and bragging about farm consolidation.

• 4:22Speaker 03

  It's like.

• 4:23Shawn Ryan?

  What is farm consolidation?

• 4:25Speaker 03

  You know.

• 4:25Shawn Ryan?

  Is that buying a bunch of family farms and putting them together at some big conglomerate?

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's that, you know, the producers, the farms are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And so what that actually means, and we've done the opposite on my farm, and I'd love to talk to you about that. But what that actually means is every time one of these farms goes away or disappears, there's life that we lose in our rural communities. And our rural communities in Iowa, in the Midwest, they're on life support. But these companies want to work with bigger and bigger producers. And we know that. We know, we know why they want to do that. It's easier. They have less costs when they're dealing with less customers. They can control people easier. And so the statistics that you're talking about, about young farmers, you know,

• 5:14Speaker 03

  the World Economic Forum talked about that you'll own nothing and you'll be happy. This is a part of it. Twenty-five percent of Iowa's farmland, at least 25%, is now owned by people who don't live in the state, out-of-state funds and investors. A quarter of my state is owned by people who will never go to a Friday night football game in our small town, who aren't shopping on our main streets. Like, this is in line with Blackstone buying single-family homes. The same thing is happening to our agriculture community. The thing that's so difficult for what I'm trying to undertake right now is to get to the farmers, to help them understand that this is happening on purpose.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  They don't want more family farms. As a matter of fact, if you go to the WF, they don't want sovereignty for our country. And so what's, one of the ways you can strip away sovereignty is to have them have an insecure food base in the state. You can't feed yourself. How are you sovereign? And it's gotten, you know, Sean, it's gotten very bad to this point. You know, I'll be in these debates with people about the use of agrochemicals and things like that. And when I'm in them, they keep talking about this idea that, well, we need this to produce food. We need glyphosate, for instance, to produce food.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  And what they're not discussing is that in my state of Iowa, 0.03% of our acres are used to produce anything that will end up on your plate in its original form.

• 6:50Shawn Ryan?

  Could you say that again? How much?

• 6:51Speaker 03

  0.03% of our acres, out of 24 million acres, it's roughly 9,000 acres in Iowa, is used to produce any produce, food, that will end up on your plate in its original form. So it's primarily-

• 7:04Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. It's all chemicals.

• 7:07Speaker 03

  It's like, so they have, they're producing ethanol. They're, uh, and like, we can talk about these things, but they're producing feed that will then be shipped out of state for, for animals and shipped out of our country for animals. Iowa has the best farmland in the world, I would say, and we import 95% of our food.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  So there's a big movement of people that want to see, you know, homesteading and smaller farms crop up. But when you have out-of-state investors that are coming in and buying up land and jacking up the, the price of land, there's not one young person that can afford to get on land.

• 7:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:49Speaker 03

  And so your statistics, I look at it from even a different perspective. I look at it from this perspective, that, that aging population of farmers, they're on break-even margins now because they're being extorted by big agriculture companies that continue to raise their prices, even as commodity prices stay the same or drop because they've formed monopolies now. You know, Donald Trump and Brooke Rollins are talking about this. Talking about breaking these, these monopolies up. And other, a few other politicians have talked about it.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  But there used to be a heritage in my state where, you know, grandpa would run the farm. And then when he got older, he would step away. Often, he would move to a different house. And then son would farm and raise the family. That's what happened with my family.

• 8:40Speaker 03

  But the idea of supporting two incomes, two families now in Iowa, it's basically gone for the average farmer.

• 8:48Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 8:49Speaker 03

  So we're, we're heading towards a cliff. And, you know, just a little bit of where I come from on this is that, you know, my family came to Iowa in 1850, around then. Actually, my great, great grandfather was one of the famed Hawkeyes on horseback in the Civil War. He was, you know, they participated, actually fought in the Battle of Nashville, Tristan and Garrison's raid. These were people that were brought in in Iowa's 2nd Cavalry to go counter the opposing Calvaries that were, you know, wreaking havoc.

• 9:27Speaker 03

  And he was in a state that wasn't a part of this battle. It was in America, but it wasn't, what was going on around the, in the country was not happening in Iowa.

• 9:38Speaker 03

  At the end of the Civil War, more Iowans fought in the Civil War than any other state per capita.

• 9:43Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 9:44Speaker 03

  Yes. And there's deep reasons for that, and it's about where they came from and what they were leaving. And that in Germany, when they came over, they had just, you know, left this feudal system, they were trying to have an uprising. They were defeated, they were exiled. Iowa came online right in 1846, heavy agrarian culture. So you have these people that were fleeing a country primarily because they wanted to control their destiny. They wanted to own their land. They wanted to have the ability to build their communities.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  And then you see what happens with the expansion, the potential expansion of slavery. And all these very wealthy people on the East Coast that were slave owners, wanting to make the Midwest slave states so they could control it.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  I firmly believe that part of the reason that Iowa stood up the way that they did was because they fled that situation in their own country. And they didn't want it happening where they were. So he came over. And then about 20 years later, my great, great grandfather came over on a ship from Hamburg by himself at 14. And he was in the stowage of the ship and he made his way to Iowa. And then in 1900, they built, he and my, his uncle built our family homestead. Wow. In Belle Plaine.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  And that place was a place of deep stories for decades and decades. From the Great Depression to World War II, to my great, great uncle fighting in World War I, going overseas, fighting in World War I and coming back to run the local newspaper. While his brother kept everything steady with the farm. And then my grandpa mowing a runway in the bean field and buying a 1942 Taylorcraft and learning how to fly and starting a career in aviation. And his brother flew off aircraft carriers in the Pacific in the 40s.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  Like, these are our stories of our history and our culture and our people. And in 2005, my family farm was sold. My great grandmother had passed away. And my grandma had called me at the time and I was in college and asked me if I wanted anything to do with the farm. I didn't know what that would be, but I was, I was out in Colorado at the time. I was like, no, I'm, I'm, I'm gone. But if you fast forward a number of years, I stopped in just to see the farm and I was going to visit a family over in eastern Iowa. And I just told them, if you're ever going to sell this place, please let me know. And then they called me a couple of years later and they said, hey, we're going to sell. Would you like to buy?

• 12:32Speaker 03

  And before I could even think about it, I said, yes, 100%. I want to buy this. So in 2014, I bought the family farm back. And then over the past 11 years, I've spent restoring that farm board by board, using old pictures that I got from my great grandmother's photo collection. And during that time, I remember, you know, a story that people often ask me, "Why did I do that?" And what I, what comes to me is that, you know, I really want my children to understand their story. I want them to understand their history, like who built them? And that these generations before them toiled and suffered and jumped in to go to the Civil

• 13:16Speaker 03

  War when they didn't have to, and like to protect what we have. And I wanted them to understand that deep story and connect to it. It was never because I wanted to run for office. I actually don't even want to be a politician. But I remember after I bought the farm, I was down in the basement. I had signed the papers, came to the farmhouse, I was down in the basement, I was leaning against a wooden post in the basement. This is, this has actually happened. And I just said to myself, "What am I doing?" Like, this place needs so much work. It's going to take forever. Like, it was a stretch to buy it in the first place to get the loan. And I'm leaning on this post, and I turn,

• 13:59Speaker 03

  and the post are the initials V.L. is my grandpa. And I just said to myself, "This is why I'm doing it." Because these things truly matter, that we don't forget where we came from. And so bringing this into what you just talked about, that's what's at stake. That's what's being taken from us. And so me deciding to run for governor was a choice of wanting to throw everything I have in to protect the culture that helped build my

• 14:38Speaker 03

  state, build my people, and say, "It's worth preserving." Like, "This is worth preserving." It's provided for the greatest alleviation in suffering ever known to mankind, our culture has, great prosperity. And if you look back at the principles of what, of where, what they came to do, it wasn't that they came here to get rich. They came here for the basics of freedom. And now, much of that is being taken away.

• 15:14Speaker 03

  And so that's why I'm in this race. I often ask myself, is there room for people in politics who still actually care?

• 15:26Shawn Ryan?

  That's the question of the fucking day, man.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  It's a question I, I, I, it comes up often. And here's what I love. I'm not out there talking about my opponents in a negative way at all. I won't do it. That's not, it's not why I'm here. I'm not out trying to make people afraid that Iowa's going to become the next Minnesota if we, if we like, don't do X, Y, or Z. I'm here.

• 15:50Shawn Ryan?

  What's wrong with Minnesota?

• 15:52Speaker 03

  If you're a daycare provider, nothing.

• 15:54Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, shit.

• 15:56Speaker 03

  It, you know, I just believe that my job, what God's calling me to do in this time in my life, is to tell a better story about what we could be as a state, to bring people together about that. And I will tell you, when I'm out on the campaign trail, and I'm new to all this, like, I don't, like, I've never done this before, I don't have a script that I'm going off of. I have a couple of key points that I'm really, I'm really passionate about. But what I try to do is just tell the truths to people and not worry about what these big companies, lobbyists, or special interests are going to think about me.

• 16:38Speaker 03

  And just believe, like, to the point I mentioned earlier, that God's going to protect me in this whole endeavor, and that he's got a plan for this.

• 16:45Shawn Ryan?

  It's a good way to live. It's a good way to live.

• 16:52Shawn Ryan?

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• 17:37Shawn Ryan?

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• 17:54Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Sarah Adams, the host of Vigilance Elites: The Watch Floor, where we highlight what matters. It became a permissive state. Explain to you why it matters, and then aim to leave you feeling better informed than you were before you hit play. Terrorists, hostile intelligence agencies, organized crime, not everything is urgent. But this show will focus on what is need to know, not just what is nice to know.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  I don't know if I could do it any other way. I'm, I'm, I think everywhere we look, we see the opposite in politics. Like what's expedient? What will get people to donate to me? You know, I had somebody once mention to me is that you need to imagine every voter is walking around with little buttons on them. And your job is to figure out what those buttons are, what they, what they like, and push as many as you can so they'll like you. And I say, guys,

• 19:04Shawn Ryan?

  Jeez.

• 19:05Speaker 03

  This is not at all what people are asking for. They want, they, I believe, they want people that are willing to take on the big systemic issues that they're facing.

• 19:14Shawn Ryan?

  It's getting to the fucking point where I'll just take anybody with a spine.

• 19:20Shawn Ryan?

  You got a spine? You have a fucking pole? Like, it's, it's... I just feel so lied to. It's, it's, I mean, we talked about it when, when, you know, when our mutual friend Rich connected us.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:32Shawn Ryan?

  I, Rich called me about you and I was like, "I don't know, man. I don't, I don't know if I'm gonna interview another fucking guy running for office." And, uh, we chatted a little bit and I was like, "All right, I'll, I'll give, I'll give Zach a call." And we chatted and, and I really liked what you had to say. I mean, we talked about it. I was just like, "Man, I just..." Sat in front of, I don't know how many politicians now, and they just fucking lie, lie, lie.

• 20:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:01Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's so much hope. So much hope for this administration. And I don't know about everybody else, but my hope went right down the fucking shitter in less than a year. And, you know, when, I know we're gonna talk about this, but you know, the fucking Maha movement. I was all about that shit. I'm scared to death of cancer.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:22Shawn Ryan?

  I just found out about microwaves the other day. Now we're shitcanning our fucking microwave.

• 20:26Speaker 03

  My wife threw ours out years ago.

• 20:28Shawn Ryan?

  But, but, you know what I mean? I'm, I'm all excited, like, "Oh, they're gonna clean up the food. They're gonna get rid of these pesticides. They're gonna get rid of all this shit." What did I see the other day? We fucking, they ran, they fucking ran hard on this stuff, man. Hard on this. All the, all the health, uh, influencers and the doctors with big names, they're all fucking rallying around the Maha movement. "Oh, let's throw a big fucking party." Less than a year in, well, I don't, I don't know if anything has changed other than I saw that they, they, Trump signed an executive order and fucking RFK backed him and said, "We're gonna give immunity to..." Was it Bayer? Is it Bayer? Whatever it is.

• 21:11Speaker 03

  Producers of glyphosate-based herbicides.

• 21:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:15Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you, Trump. Thank you, RFK. Good fucking job. Way to fucking stick to your constituents.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  You know.

• 21:24Shawn Ryan?

  Shit gives me chills, man. It's just every fucking thing that came out of these guys' mouths is a fucking lie. It just makes me, it makes me think, what is, what is the fucking point of voting? Is there a point?

• 21:36Speaker 03

  I think, I, I, I think there are far too many people that are coming to that same conclusion. That are just saying, "Why am I doing this?" You know, I, you-

• 21:47Shawn Ryan?

  Doesn't mean you give up, but I can tell you one thing, fucking vote isn't gonna fix this shit.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're reaching a tipping point. And I think more and more people, oh, look, you look at why somebody like Nick Fuentes is getting a giant audience. Why do you think that is? What happened with the Hunter Biden laptop? Why hasn't Anthony Fauci been arrested yet? What about, like, all of these politicians that have been in on a lot of this, you know, this global ring of pedophilia? Like, and then you wonder, why are young people checking out? Was because they just see it all as a lie.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  I deal with this all the time in what I'm doing right now. Because as somebody who actually wants to make a difference and change things, and the beauty of the Constitution and the 10th Amendment says that I can do that in my state, like, I have zero interest in being in Washington DC whatsoever.

• 22:40Speaker 03

  I think it's my personal view, and people will, you know, Republicans will come after me for saying this, is that it's beyond repair. It's, and let me give you an example of why. Gosh, I'm getting a bit upset here, but well, let's go back to farming.

• 22:58Speaker 03

  Over the past 10 years, the agriculture companies have spent a billion and a half dollars lobbying Washington DC, a billion and a half. During that same time, their profits have went up $150 billion.

• 23:14Speaker 03

  And at the same time, we've lost 100,000 family farms. Okay, so I mentioned that earlier, but what does that mean? It means that there, there's a capture of these agencies that's so deep that lobbyists are able to put in place whatever policies that they want to, basically, and we've seen this now, like, with, with these immunity.

• 23:33Shawn Ryan?

  We've been with all kinds of shit. We see it with other countries. We see it with, with, with the glyphosate stuff. We see, we see it with pharmaceuticals, see it with oil and gas. We see it with fucking everywhere. Everywhere but the actual American people. That's, they give a fuck about everything else but the American people.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  Well, and that's when I go back to this idea that, you know, farmers in my state are starting to understand that these companies are not their friends. They're like, look. They're charging foreign farmers, these three big companies in our country are charging foreign farmers less for the same amount of product than they charge our farmers. Just like they were doing in pharmaceuticals. So they're saying, if you yield more crop, we're gonna take more money because we can. And there's a complete monopoly here. Nobody wants to address it, but there is. And so the hard part for me is that as I'm talking about these things, there's a divergence.

• 24:35Speaker 03

  Farmers understand these companies are extorting them. But the part that gets me is that there's such a complex of working organisms in DC and lobbyists and the capitals that have gaslit these people to make them believe that these products are safe for their health. Safe products don't need immunity from liability. Full stop. If you want to see an example of that, look at the vaccine situation we have in our country right now. The 1986 vaccine immunity has probably caused the greatest amount of suffering of any piece of legislation that we've had. And so what happens?

• 25:20Speaker 03

  Well, we see it's that one and a half billion dollars of lobbying that these companies do. I'm surprised it's not more than that. Well, that's just for one industry in one sector. I mean, right now in DC, I read that Bayer has spent nine, Bayer has two lobbyists per member of Congress right now pushing for this immunity. The average amount they spend per member of Congress is more than the members of Congress make in a year. This is the capture. And what I'll go back to is talking about what they've been doing with this immunity.

• 26:03Speaker 03

  And so when you look at what they're actually doing, I say this, like, right now, we have these companies pushing at the state capitals, we have them pushing at the Supreme Court, we have them putting things into the farm bill, which, by the way, I don't think you should be able to enter something into a bill in Washington DC without your name being next to it, of who actually put this in. It's like, we need a blockchain service that says, like, here's who put this ridiculous idea in that's going to help this one special interest, so we know exactly who to talk to about that, and who to go after about that. And then you have the executive order. So this, what I said, this is how big agriculture wages war. That's what they're doing, because they continue to lose in court.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  And just, just to summarize that, when you talk about this gaslighting of people, what, what, what these paid people from these companies continue to say about this is that, oh, these juries aren't scientists. I tell people, Bayer and Monsanto can afford the best attorneys in the world, they have no shortage of cash, they have every bit of influence in the jury selection process as the plaintiffs do. And these juries are hearing about 100 hours of evidence in these, each of these, these major trials, and they're still losing. And so why is that?

• 27:28Speaker 03

  Because we have internal documents, for one, for one thing, that show exactly that they, what they knew, and that they knew it. There's actually things in these documents that are so egregious, like this, right now in Europe, the type of agricultural Roundup that we use is banned.

• 27:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:52Speaker 03

  People don't talk about this, and when the industry people talk about it, they say it's a lie, but what they, they say glyphosate isn't banned in the EU. That's true, glyphosate isn't banned in the EU, but the formulation of Roundup that we use in the United States is banned in the EU, because it's so toxic. So what did Monsanto do in, I think, 2015, when this was coming out in the EU? They reformulated their, their Roundup.

• 28:18Speaker 03

  Into a formulation that by some measures is 20 times less toxic than what we use in the United States. Geez. And then there's emails. Now, has their food production gone down? I'm just curious. No, and not only is their food production not gone down, but also they have far more stringent levels of what's even allowed as residue on their products. It's why you hear so many people saying they can go to Europe and eat bread or eat pasta or things like this, and they don't feel sick afterwards.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  But in these emails from what's called the Monsanto files, which are- Oh shit, more email files. More email files. Here we go. Here we go. In these emails, what you see is a captured agency, the EPA is captured, but you also see a lot of internal emails between Monsanto executives and people at Monsanto and each other. So for instance, when the EU was saying, "This formulation that you use in the United States, we are not going to allow you to use," it's with something called POEA's, polyoxyethylated tallow anines. It's actually the product within glyphosate, within Roundup, that they formulate to have it break down the skin, basically, of the plant to allow it to enter the plant easier.

• 29:33Speaker 03

  Well, it does that on human skin, too. It actually operates on fat. And so, and this is, this is, I'll get into this in a little bit, but this is part of what they don't want people to talk about, is that they'll always say glyphosate is safe, and they will not talk about glyphosate-based herbicides, which are known to be far more toxic, because the product can actually get in your bloodstream quicker and more efficiently.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  So, the, one of the emails that was shared between the Monsanto EU representative and the US company, after they reformulated it to make it safer for the EU, the email went out that said, "Why would we continue to make a harmful product when we can make a safer one?" And they didn't change a thing. They know how to make these products safer. We have their internal communications to know that they're lying to us.

• 30:31Speaker 03

  But instead of owning up and putting a warning on the label, which is what they would have to do to stem the tide of a lot of this, they're going after state houses and trying to get immunity. They're putting into the farm bill to get immunity. They're now pushing the Supreme Court to get immunity. And they now have an executive order, which, just to dispel any confusion, does not exclude immunity at all. Meaning, there's nothing in that executive order that says that it does not apply to product liability.

• 31:06Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, we just saw, I mean, we were just talking about it before they, before we sat down here. I mean, we, was it Rusty Grills, a state congressman or something here in Tennessee? I got, I got, I got a call by, shit, I can't, I'm drawing a blank here, but he ran for Congress, he almost fucking won, nobody's ever heard of him. And he shot me a text, and, and, you know, told me about this, this, this bill that was getting ready to get signed into law.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:37Shawn Ryan?

  The Rusty Grills, you saw the, the clip?

• 31:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:40Shawn Ryan?

  I think. And, you know, so I call, I got that the day they were signed, I'm like, well, shit, I got like 30 minutes. He's like, well, you got an hour. I was like, oh, okay. I was like, just give me the details and I'll, I'll get something out. And he gave me the details and I wondered, you know, you saw the little selfie video? Bill got yanked 30 minutes after that.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  That's what I saw. I saw your video.

• 32:08Shawn Ryan?

  But then everybody's texting me saying, oh, this, don't worry, it's gonna come up again.

• 32:11Speaker 03

  Oh, well.

• 32:12Shawn Ryan?

  It'll come up again. But it's, it's, these people are fucking, they are paying attention. They know what we want. Especially, especially the federal government.

• 32:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:25Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, country's been pretty loud about a lot of things and they're just, they're just willfully ignoring everything we want.

• 32:33Shawn Ryan?

  And doing whatever the hell they please. It's, it's fucking insane. It's insane. Let me, let me give you an introduction here real quick, Zach.

• 32:42Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 32:43Shawn Ryan?

  Should have done this at the beginning. Zach Lane, a sixth generation Iowan. You're a regenerative farmer and businessman. Running to become the next governor of Iowa, independent of party leadership. Son of a Christian pastor, raised with a strong foundation in faith, family and service. Founder of Home Place Ventures, investing in agriculture, real estate and technology with a focus on local ownership. Husband to Annie, you're raising seven children together and most importantly, you're a Christian.

• 33:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:13Shawn Ryan?

  Welcome to the show.

• 33:15Speaker 03

  Thank you. I think, um,

• 33:19Speaker 03

  as I hear you read that, you know, something that comes to me is that, um, as you said, most important is a Christian.

• 33:28Speaker 03

  That might be where in the deepest part of me, this really like gets me. Is that, you know, my dad was a 30-year conservationist. He's a pastor, conservationist.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  And as I was growing up, the lessons that he was teaching me about stewarding creation, about taking responsibility and doing the right thing with your land and with your property. That all ties back to, as Jordan Peterson would say, beauty is a pathway to God, to the divine. It all connects in. And so when I take a look at what's happening around the state of Iowa, with our farmland being owned by people don't live here, which you can't steward land properly if you don't live in the state. You can't take care of it the way that you would.

• 34:18Speaker 03

  And you look at single-family homes being bought by trillion-dollar, you know, Wall Street hedge funds.

• 34:25Speaker 03

  Or you look at agriculture companies extorting farmers and putting monopolistic practices in place. This comes back to like something of faith for me, meaning there is such things right and wrong. There are things that we are called to do. And you know, of all the laws that that were given in the Old Testament, Jesus boiled them down to two. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. And he actually, when he was pressed on this by the Pharisees, who's your neighbor? He kind of came back, he says, no, the question is to whom are you being neighborly?

• 35:07Speaker 03

  Because it's not, it's not a law of like, oh, this person, that person, like who's within proximity of where I live. It's actually much deeper that we are tasked with working to make life better for the people around us and the people in our communities in our state. And this key question that the Amish have asked for a very long time before they make a big decision, which is, what will this change do to my community? Before they make the decision, has not been asked by politicians in a very long time. And so when I'm thinking about running, that's what it comes back to for me, is this idea of when I'm gone, what are my kids going to be able to look back?

• 35:52Speaker 03

  You know, before I come, came on to this podcast, my prayer is very simple. I want to put something into the world that my children can look back on and be proud that their dad was fighting for something that really mattered.

• 36:06Shawn Ryan?

  A hundred percent get that.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  And so when I look at what's going on in Iowa, and I tie it back to our heritage as a people, and I just wonder are my kids going to even want to live here with everything that's going on?

• 36:23Shawn Ryan?

  A lot of people looking at dual citizenship right now.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  So.

• 36:27Shawn Ryan?

  I'm fucking one of it.

• 36:29Speaker 03

  Don't. No, come to Iowa. You be a dual citizen of Iowa. I'll give you like.

• 36:32Shawn Ryan?

  I would love to, but I don't want to get fucking cancer.

• 36:35Speaker 03

  I know, I know.

• 36:35Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and, and, and let's take it. We're gonna come right back to farming, but you brought something up just a minute ago that I want to hit on.

• 36:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:43Shawn Ryan?

  And, and so I want to tie, I want to talk about Christianity, the federal government and state government.

• 36:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:48Shawn Ryan?

  You, just a few minutes ago, you had said that you think that, I, I believe you said that you think that something along the lines of the federal government is, is unreparable.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 36:59Shawn Ryan?

  And that you would get pushed back from Republicans for saying that. Do you, do you believe that?

• 37:03Speaker 03

  Do I believe it's irreparable?

• 37:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I, you know.

• 37:09Shawn Ryan?

  I do too.

• 37:10Speaker 03

  This is what, I, that's what I.

• 37:12Shawn Ryan?

  I think it's completely fucking gone.

• 37:14Speaker 03

  Look.

• 37:15Shawn Ryan?

  Gone.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  You know, here's the thing. There's this idea of the American experiment. And that is real and true and good.

• 37:24Speaker 03

  But if you look at the deviation we've had from that. I think the most, yeah, one of the common questions that comes up for me is what do I think is the most pressing issue facing the country today? And I keep coming back to this. Our country's run by unelected people and we don't know who they are. And so if you're in a, in a, a republic.

• 37:48Shawn Ryan?

  Figuring out who they are.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  If you're in a republic.

• 37:52Speaker 03

  And your elected officials aren't making the decisions for you. That you have big business, that you have special intern lobbyists, that you have undue influence from foreign governments, like if that's the situation you're in, like my tendency to say, let's hunker down and make Iowa amazing. And let's get ready for whatever comes next because I want my state to be one that's prosperous. To be one that has great education, clean water, that like people have opportunity in my state. But no, I, I have no interest in running for office to be in Washington DC. And you know what? I think there are good people really trying to do the right thing. You asked my personal opinion and I'm not a politician, so I'm just going to tell you it. I, like, to me, it's beyond repair.

• 38:35Shawn Ryan?

  I think so too. So much so that a less than five congressmen, less than five people in, in federal politics altogether, I think are, are like.

• 38:48Shawn Ryan?

  True to to their constituents, true to their word and and and they know what they know what honor means and you know they have actual real values and I've tried to convince every single one of them to come back to the state and come back and run our fucking state because this is the only thing we have left is the states.

• 39:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:08Shawn Ryan?

  We don't have a federal government. That shit has run away every fucking institution, the CIA, the FBI, all of them, all of them. I mean, I just had a guy on here goes by AJ, got blasted with a microwave weapon. Have you heard about Havana syndrome?

• 39:21Speaker 03

  I have heard about Havana syndrome.

• 39:22Shawn Ryan?

  You know what the CIA told them?

• 39:23Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 39:24Shawn Ryan?

  That they have to make a decision between their people and the institution, taking care of their people or the institution. They'll pick the institution and they will willing willingly lie to Congress to cover this shit up. That's our fucking now, how can we trust anything at all, anything that comes out of an institution that's openly that that says, I guess not openly, behind closed doors, that they will willingly lie to Congress? And that's just one institution.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  Well, institutional capture has been go has been done on purpose and been going on for a very long time. And now we're seeing like, look, I think the people that would sympathize with what you and I are saying the most is the average voter.

• 40:14Shawn Ryan?

  I think so too.

• 40:15Speaker 03

  Like you, you, you talk about the average voter and what hope they believe that we have in Washington DC. And like, thi- this was something I had to think deeply about because I wasn't planning to run for this seat. You know, the seat hasn't been open in 20 years in Iowa. The longest serving governor in the history of America is from Iowa. What I had to look at was with the issues I'm talking to you about, that I'm watching every day in my state, was I willing to not do this, knowing that the next governor could be there till I die?

• 40:48Speaker 03

  There's no term limits. And the institutional capture is very real. I'm not the establishment candidate.

• 40:56Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  But I'm also not somebody who's like here to. What I am here to do is give my people a voice. To say, what you and I are talking about, they're talking about, we hear it. And they'd have to kill me to change the way I view these things, to get me to do something different that would be adverse to what the state and the people need. It's like, I told somebody the other day, I heard this term is called, somebody used the term economic nationalism. It was basically this idea that like the economy and the government of the country should be there to focus on making life better for the people in the country.

• 41:41Speaker 03

  And I think, like, did we ever think that there was anything else? Did like, I mean, we see something else, but like, this is what it's supposed to be. The state of Iowa, its economy, its government, all the efforts it's undertaking should be solely focused on making life better for the people that are living there. And let me give you one of the most egregious examples about this in my own state. Right now, there's three big companies that that control 85% of the agriculture input market. When I was growing up in Iowa, there were over 300 companies. They've bought up and bought up and consolidated and consolidated. This is why farmers have the illusion of choice. One of those companies is a company called Syngenta.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  Syngenta is 100% owned by the state of China. 100%. And we can get into what they produce and all of these things and that, but let me just say this first. Since being Chinese owned, the state government of Iowa has given a Chinese company $7.5 million in refundable tax credits paid for by the taxpayers. Propping up a Chinese company.

• 42:53Shawn Ryan?

  See, this is where I was going to, sorry.

• 43:00Shawn Ryan?

  We see all this waste, fraud and abuse, you know, and they always want to fucking raise the taxes. Let's raise taxes so we can send it to Israel. We can send it to Ukraine. We can send it to fucking whoever, you know, we can, we can, we can pay China's fucking, you know, whatever bill, ta- you know, the taxpayers will pay it. You know, what, that's another, it's, it's, it's like, I don't even, I, I, why can't, I mean, we, we need strong, we need strong governors and state legislators and, you know, what, what would it take for a state to go, fuck you, federal government, we're not paying taxes. We're gonna raise our state taxes. We don't need your fucking funding. We don't need any of your bullshit.

• 43:44Shawn Ryan?

  None of it. Fuck you. We're gonna raise our state taxes and if you send in any fucking IRS agents, we're gonna have them arrested and put in fucking jail in the, in the state. I mean, is that even a, is that even, is that a possibility? Because the government is just, it is, it is all waste, fraud and abuse. Greed, pedophilia, it's, that's what it is. It is what it is. Like, you can't hide this shit anymore. You know, and so, why, why aren't more, you know, why aren't more people standing up and taking control? I, it just, it just-

• 44:18Speaker 03

  You know, one of the things, let me say this first, is that what you're talk- people talk to me, running for governor, about this idea of like foreign aid. And I say, my state doesn't have clean drinking water.

• 44:31Shawn Ryan?

  Exactly.

• 44:32Speaker 03

  Why would I ever want to send one dollar to any foreign country when we have the fastest rate of new cancer in the history of civilization? We don't have clean drinking water. Like, no, this is, this is what I'm talking about. This is where we expect our dollars to stay in our state, to benefit our people. And the idea that we'd use refundable tax credits to support a Chinese company, when by the way, we have homegrown Iowa companies that compete with them. They compete. One of these guys testified in front of a congressional hearing, which let me just say this, like- This goes to your example. How many times have we seen a congressional hearing about this? Or this thing come up and it's like Congress is talking about it and absolutely nothing happens?

• 45:16Shawn Ryan?

  Too worried about aliens right now. Aliens and fucking UFOs.

• 45:21Speaker 03

  Like, what's the next thing?

• 45:22Shawn Ryan?

  You shitting me?

• 45:23Speaker 03

  In this-

• 45:24Shawn Ryan?

  Aliens. Fucking aliens. That's what they're talking about.

• 45:30Speaker 03

  When you see that come out, it's just like, anybody that's awake is just like, I'm sorry, what? Like, we are done being distracted from the things that actually matter. We're smarter than this. But in this hearing on what's going on in the agriculture input markets, one entrepreneur, third-generation Iowa seedsman, creating independent seeds, who's competing against these companies, is talking about what these companies do. Just a little background here. We have GMO seeds, and so those genetics have patents on them. And the patents last about 20 years. And once the patent runs out, they're supposed to go into a seed library.

• 46:10Speaker 03

  So an independent seed maker can pull that seed off the shelf, and they can use it to make their own version, and usually often, most often, like generic drugs, cheaper. What this third-generation seedsman testified about in front of Congress is that when these big companies, two companies, control all of the seed genetics in our country, when one of those big companies puts that on the shelf in the seed library, before they do it, they scramble the name of it into random letters and numbers so he can't figure out what it is, and he has to continue going to them for royalties and pay royalties to get seeds.

• 46:45Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 46:47Speaker 03

  And so, where's the justice system on this? This is what we come back to. And so, yes, as governor, I've already said very, very openly, I plan to sue the federal government every chance I get.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  And just to be very clear, I actually think Donald Trump would like that. You know, the Chevron doctrine was overturned, saying that like, that if Congress didn't specifically put a regulation in place that states we can sue now if regulators have made up their own rules, which they've made up millions and probably billions of pages of these rules. But we have got to get back to the point where we're looking to say, how are we going to liberate ourselves from exactly what you're talking about? The first step I would do is sue. But this also just goes back to why I'm not running for Congress. It's like, I agree with what you're saying about, we need to go deep into our state. We need to have good governors who are willing to stand up and just put it all on the line. I've had people already ask me, Sean, not that, you know, people just ask these questions.

• 47:47Speaker 03

  Are you thinking about doing anything bigger than this? No, I'm not. I don't want to do anything different than this. Matter of fact, this isn't something I woke up in the morning and said, I really like to go do this and put my family through all this. What I said was, if I don't do this, if I don't bring this up, if I don't put my own money into this and say to these donors, I don't want your funds.

• 48:10Speaker 03

  How much longer is a state that I love, that I grew up in, that my family like helped to pioneer, how much longer is that going to even be recognizable to me? Probably not very long. Not very long. But I believe that with the right governor, and here's the thing, we have things we could change in the state of Iowa that a governor could change right now to make some of the hot button issues that the voters are talking about, like, go away or get much better. And even on the Republican side, we're not doing it. I mean, there's been great advancements and, you know, we've passed school choice legislation. We've lowered taxes and all these things. But what I often say to people is like, this is not about taxes or regulations.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  This is about our culture and identity as, as Iowans and as Americans.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  The free market.

• 49:02Speaker 03

  Doesn't take into account culture. It doesn't fix cultural issues. Oftentimes, it makes them worse. People ask me, what do you mean by that? It's like, what's the free market solution for the declining church attendance in our country? We have to make those decisions. And that is actually the sole reason I am running, is to say, we have to get the culture right in our state. If we don't get the culture right, like, we're gonna end up like Washington DC. Because the same people that are buying off politicians and looking for influence in Washington DC are coming to the states. They're coming less and less because more and more power is being concentrated in DC. But that's why we have to start suing. And we have to start saying, we're gonna be bringing this back into the control of

• 49:46Speaker 03

  our state. So, to me, it goes back to culture. It goes back to who are we? What do we want to stand for as a people? And do the traditions and the heritage of our state and our ancestors matter to us? Because I can tell you, they would have revolted for far less than what's going on right now.

• 50:11Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:11Speaker 03

  And they did, for far less. You know, I was talking to somebody about the conditions of farming in Iowa. And he was telling me a story that I end up looking up. And it was about, you know, in the 30s, about how bad farming conditions were. And there was farmers from basically 80% of the counties in our state, that started protesting to such a level that the sheriffs had to bring out submachine guns. And I would actually say that the conditions we have right now are worse. We're to the point where you'll have people talk about farming as if it's just a hobby,

• 50:56Speaker 03

  meaning like, you have to have an off-farm job to support your family, but you're still farming? And I've even seen agricultural establishment people bragging about that. It's like, hey, they just love, they do it for free. They just love it. I'm thinking, you don't understand this. Like, this is a key part of our heritage, and we're being poisoned with our food. We import 95% of what we eat in the state. And basically, none of our land is actually grow anything that we eat.

• 51:31Speaker 03

  The entire chessboard is backwards.

• 51:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Let's talk about the collapse of the family farms.

• 51:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:39Shawn Ryan?

  You want to?

• 51:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. Love to.

• 51:42Shawn Ryan?

  What are they turning them into? Data centers?

• 51:46Speaker 03

  The.

• 51:47Shawn Ryan?

  It's a big thing right now. A lot of, a lot of real estate investors are looking for land next to power grids so that they could build a huge data center.

• 51:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh, yeah.

• 51:54Shawn Ryan?

  Leas it out to a big data center.

• 51:56Speaker 03

  Let me answer your first question is what, what's happening to family farms? Most of the time they're being bulldozed and farmed over. So the place like my house, I was afraid that was going to happen to my family's home. And that's why I couldn't say no when the opportunity came to buy it for me. Because what used to be these small farm sets dotting all these places and known by the last name of the people that lived there for a hundred years are just being bulldozed, farmed over and forgotten.

• 52:30Speaker 03

  But when you talk about bigger efforts, you talked about, you know, data centers. There's many examples of how this is happening across the country and what's happening in Iowa, too.

• 52:43Speaker 03

  You know, if you go to the south of Cedar Rapids,

• 52:48Speaker 03

  so if you're in Cedar Rapids, you head south towards the airport. You will drive past what used to be farmland.

• 52:56Speaker 03

  That had been farmland for generations and generations.

• 53:00Speaker 03

  That now looks like a military installation is being put in. I've never seen so many pieces of heavy equipment in my life. I've never seen something built so quickly in my life.

• 53:11Speaker 03

  And what it is, is two companies, Google and QTS, have bought 1,400 acres of farmland. And they're building data centers there.

• 53:22Speaker 03

  Now, I'm not going to get like debate about like whether we should have data centers or not. I, I, I think we're being a bit premature on this, especially with Elon Musk talking about putting them in space. But in that there's a broader issue here of we're not thinking through at all what AI is going to do to us as a people or our communities. So like, I could come to that discussion in a different way, but just from a policy perspective or just a principle perspective on, on this.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  The city of Cedar Rapids gave one of those data centers $529 million in tax rebates.

• 54:00Speaker 03

  What? Half a billion dollars in tax rebates to come to Cedar Apps to put this data center in. And I want me to say this, in the contract, they're contractually obligated to create jobs as part of this, to receive these tax breaks. For 529 million, they're contractually obligated to create 30 jobs. Seventeen million dollars a job. It's a big paycheck. Huge. And what I say is like, look, you want to build a data center in Iowa? I'm going to charge you far more in property tax. And I'm going to use it to lower the property taxes of the people in the communities that you're around. We won't be taken advantage of anymore is what I'm trying to say. Whether it's agriculture companies that have to sue to break up their monopolies, or just

• 54:45Speaker 03

  say something as common as, look, 100 billion dollar multinational tech companies are searching across the country to find land to build data centers and get approval from governments. They're the ones that should be on the opposite end of this negotiation. We should be saying to them, what are you going to offer us? Because 30 jobs and 529 million dollars in tax breaks doesn't pencil. Wow.

• 55:16Shawn Ryan?

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• 56:01Shawn Ryan?

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• 56:32Shawn Ryan?

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• 57:17Shawn Ryan?

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• 57:49Speaker 03

  So, when we go back to this idea, Sean, you know, something I give Trump a lot of credit for is pioneering the idea of America first. You know, before Trump came into, under the scene, nobody's even really talking about China in a major way from the political standpoint. Everything was good. Like, the free trade we have with them is good, even though it's hauled out an entire region of people who then ended up getting addicted to opioids and dying off at faster rates. They're all saying how our partnership with China's great. And then Trump came in and said, "They're taking advantage of us. We're suckers." He was right, 100% right.

• 58:31Speaker 03

  So when I talk to people about what it means to be Iowa first, like this is part of my campaign. It's like, I want to put Iowa first. It's not just a slogan, it's saying like, if you're a multinational, if you're owned by a foreign government, you're getting zero dollars from my state, period.

• 58:48Speaker 03

  Those dollars will go towards homegrown Iowa entrepreneurs to build their life, to build their company, and compete with you and hopefully make it so you have a hard time keeping up. That's what it should be. That's the idea of putting Iowa first. It's the same thing about these data centers. It's like, we have two amazing assets in our state. We have our children and we have our farmland. We have some of the best in the world.

• 59:14Speaker 03

  To give them over to $100 billion multinational tech companies and then pay them, basically, to do it? It doesn't make sense. And here's, going back to what you said earlier.

• 59:28Speaker 03

  Voters know this. When I talk to them about Syngenta getting refundable tax credits from the state, I don't care how many high-quality jobs they say they're creating. The voters don't want this. They don't want to support a Chinese company.

• 59:44Speaker 03

  And they want to support Iowa companies. So this goes back to just, we've taken our eye off the ball. Our politicians aren't paying attention to the right things. And I believe they're not asking the right questions about what will these changes do to our community? And they do not care about the culture of our state and our people.

• 1:00:01Shawn Ryan?

  That's what I was gonna say. I don't know if they're not paying attention, but they definitely don't care.

• 1:00:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:06Shawn Ryan?

  They just don't give a shit.

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:09Shawn Ryan?

  Because there's no repercussions.

• 1:00:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:12Shawn Ryan?

  There's no consequences. None. Don't get reelected. What's Congress have, like a?

• 1:00:18Speaker 03

  95% reelection rate, something like that.

• 1:00:20Shawn Ryan?

  5% approval rating and 95% reelection rate?

• 1:00:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:25Shawn Ryan?

  Like, I mean, if you think the, you know, if you think the elections are good, I mean, that's...

• 1:00:37Shawn Ryan?

  We're fucking ourselves over here.

• 1:00:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you know.

• 1:00:40Shawn Ryan?

  Know what I mean?

• 1:00:41Speaker 03

  In, you know, when they have, you know, they have donation limits to run for those seats, right? Well, that just puts them in such an advantage. I actually think the limits put them in an advantage in some ways because, you know, and I'm not saying take it, take donation limits or not have donation limits. We don't have any in my race, which is part of the reason I can go elsewhere because as you could probably imagine, my message within the big agriculture community of donors isn't exactly popular.

• 1:01:09Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet.

• 1:01:10Speaker 03

  And so I'm going elsewhere to raise funds from people who want to see

• 1:01:16Speaker 03

  the agriculture, the culture of agriculture in our state restored, regenerative farming, safer practices, less cancer. But if you look at Congress, you know, finding those people, if you're an upstart candidate who are going to be willing to give you the $7,000 apiece, I mean, you have to put a lot of that money together to be able to wage any sort of battle against one of these entrenched people. And so in every, every part of the deck is stacked against the person that's trying to unseat somebody, every part of it. So when I look at Iowa and I look at what are we doing with our state? How can we like make a major difference in our state?

• 1:01:59Speaker 03

  It comes to the most entrenched interest for me. The people that are paying the money so politicians will look the other way. And I've just been very clear. People ask me all the time, are you accepting funds? I'm no, I'm not, I won't. And, you know, I think for people that are principled, what I'd like to say is like, well, yeah, but I'm never, I'm not gonna, I'm never gonna take my eye off the ball. But I just think the average voter is so weary of seeing this group or that group support them. And then they just realize, well, that was just the precursor to me knowing that I'm just gonna get screwed over.

• 1:02:34Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:35Speaker 03

  And that when it comes down, the time of addressing the fastest rate of new cancer in the country, in the world, or making sure that a big agriculture company stops losing in court,

• 1:02:49Speaker 03

  which side are they gonna line up on?

• 1:02:52Speaker 03

  And so I just can't do it from a principled standpoint of saying like, I can't look at you or in the mirror or my kids and say, well, no, that's not going to have any effect. Because these people, they know what they're doing.

• 1:03:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Let's move into glyphosate. But first, but first, I got a question for you. This is from, from a patron. We have a Patreon account. It's turned it into a community. They get the opportunity to ask every guest a question. It's from Oliver. Why do you think so many politicians are more interested in money and special interests rather than their constituents in America's progress? Furthermore, what can we do to help remedy this issue in the future?

• 1:03:39Speaker 03

  I think we

• 1:03:42Shawn Ryan?

  We've pretty much covered that.

• 1:03:44Speaker 03

  You know, but Oliver's question is, is a very big, big question because there's many, there's many things. I mean, of course, money and special interests, but I think it comes down, you know, being on this show with you right now is a very different medium than what politics usually is. Because people can actually see how I address these issues in a long form discussion. And I hope they can see my spirit and they can see like my heart. Politics isn't set up for that. And so I think that if we had more of this, of being able to understand where somebody comes from, what drives them and motivates them, there'd be less of that.

• 1:04:28Speaker 03

  And that's probably what I go back to. What's motivating them truly? Like, what's the why that when everything goes wrong and a donor pulls out or whatever, that's just going to keep them saying, I don't care, I'm doing the right thing?

• 1:04:42Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I don't know. I love, I, I'm with you, but I've interviewed probably half of the fucking administration before they got elected.

• 1:04:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:55Shawn Ryan?

  I was told all kinds of shit on air, in front of millions of people. I don't know if any of it's done.

• 1:05:04Shawn Ryan?

  In fact, some of it has just gone the complete opposite way, like, like the Maha shit that we were just talking about, which we'll get into at the end of the glyphosate section. But you know, but I, on the other hand, I agree with what you're saying because it's hard to hide and it, but they did, they found a fucking way, man. They found a way to hide.

• 1:05:23Speaker 03

  That's fair. I, you know, I think as I, as I look at this as somebody who's new in these things, and as I, as pay attention and watch the short reels and the quick news clips that come up from politicians and you realize that, like, when you know, when you're in it, when you're deep in it, you understand, well, hold on, you just took this vote, but you're saying this thing, or you're speaking to this group. And you know, so many times politicians will just, either they don't go face their constituents, or they come in, they talk, and they leave immediately without having to talk to them. That happens so much. So that's maybe more of my long form point. It's just that, you know, if you're unwilling

• 1:06:05Speaker 03

  to have the deep, long discussions and own up to things that you've messed up on even, because I don't think any of us would say, look, if, if you've learned and you admit that, that you're beyond repair, but none of these people are saying they did anything wrong. They're not saying they took a wrong vote. Not saying they should do this differently. But to Oliver's question, like, I think that's, that's the question of our democracy in many ways. It's like, okay, well, why do they do this? Look at all the institutional capture. Look at all the money that they're being offered. Look at the perks that they're getting.

• 1:06:47Speaker 03

  We've incentivized the wrong things. Accountability needs to be what's incentivized. I don't know exactly how to do that, but it's something that's on my mind.

• 1:06:54Shawn Ryan?

  I think we need people that will stand up to politicians too. And I understand why you wouldn't and, but there are people that can. And I think that people think that... Politicians have a lot more power than they actually do.

• 1:07:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:09Shawn Ryan?

  In fact, I just got a cease and desist from a congressman not long ago. And who said he was gonna fucking sue me. And so I did a rebuttal video. I talked to my attorney. Turns out, we could actually sue his ass. And maybe we should.

• 1:07:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:25Shawn Ryan?

  But I don't like getting into litigation and all this shit, but I wanted to prove a point. I'm not gonna let a fucking congressman or any politician push me around. No fucking way.

• 1:07:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Shawn Ryan?

  Could you imagine letting another man push you around in front of your fucking kids?

• 1:07:41Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:07:41Shawn Ryan?

  Nah, buddy. And more people need to take that stance and be like, fuck you. Cease and desist? You don't want me to talk? Fuck off.

• 1:07:49Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:07:50Shawn Ryan?

  You won't silence me and I dare you to fucking sue me. Do it. I fucking dare you.

• 1:07:56Speaker 03

  It's what you said about-

• 1:07:57Shawn Ryan?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:07:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:58Shawn Ryan?

  And what happened? Not a damn thing. I'm still here. I'm still doing the same show.

• 1:08:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:03Shawn Ryan?

  Still talking about the same fucking things.

• 1:08:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:06Shawn Ryan?

  And I did that because I wanted to set an example and show people, these fuckers aren't as powerful as you think they are. They're just pieces of shit. That's all they are. Treat them like, like, it's just, man, I'm getting, I'm getting, I'm getting angry. I'm losing my words, but it just- But that, I'm serious. You know what I mean? And it, it did. It proved. It's like, look at that.

• 1:08:25Speaker 03

  No, uh, uh, call- Calling the bluff in that, and it's like, why pull that ripcord? If you're not gonna try to follow the way through it, or if you don't know what you're doing. And I think going back to like citizens and voters, it's like, again, people should be up in arms about what's going on. You know, I've talked to voters about what Elon Musk uncovered with all of the Doge stuff. And then that our representatives are voting to put it right back in the budget. It's like, like, the-

• 1:08:54Shawn Ryan?

  Were they all rah rah rah about it?

• 1:08:57Speaker 03

  They were all the, and you know, this is like a conundrum I have because I would say, I don't, I don't, I'm not like that. Like, I don't, I don't get how you could rah rah for somebody. Like, I have like this fear of feeling like an imposter all the time about things. Like, I, like, I don't wanna get into a subject I don't know a lot about.

• 1:09:15Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:16Speaker 03

  I don't wanna, you know, uh, get out over my skis on things. And so when I see people doing things like this where they're like, oh, we're so in favor of cutting all this waste and Doge.

• 1:09:30Speaker 03

  And then when it comes time to it and the party leadership says, no, you need to have it in there. It's like, I don't know what, I don't know how you could do that. That isn't a part of my genetic pool.

• 1:09:41Shawn Ryan?

  They sold their soul.

• 1:09:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I don't, I don't get it. And even as you were talking about, I'm thinking about it. I'm just like, how do you get it?

• 1:09:51Shawn Ryan?

  We have a federal government that's sending eighty seven million dollars a week in cash to the Taliban.

• 1:09:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:59Shawn Ryan?

  That's where that flag came from. The guy that broke that, he was an Afghan American and worked in army intelligence, recovered that in Kabul from the Taliban fucking burning it.

• 1:10:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:10Shawn Ryan?

  And then came here on the show, gave it to me and told everybody that we're funding, that was like two or three years ago.

• 1:10:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:17Shawn Ryan?

  Still funding them.

• 1:10:18Speaker 03

  You know, I was reading something.

• 1:10:21Shawn Ryan?

  Fought them for over twenty years. Me personally spent fourteen years of my life in and out of those countries, only to fund them as soon as before it was over. That's our federal government. That's where we are.

• 1:10:36Speaker 00

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• 1:11:06Speaker 01

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• 1:11:36Speaker 03

  You've talked about getting upset. You know, I think back to growing up in the two thousands, when we, you know, my friends and people went off to Iraq and Afghanistan. And thinking about the ten trillion dollars we've spent on all of that.

• 1:11:55Speaker 03

  And meanwhile, we don't even have programs for our veterans when they come home. You know, my great grandpa, when his brother was off in World War I and then, and then that ended. And then during World War II, my great grandpa's a bit older. He would actually sign up locally to teach veterans how to farm when they came back from World War II. And that just got me interested in like, what was it like back then for veterans coming home? Because they saw some just terrible things.

• 1:12:25Speaker 03

  And I couldn't believe the extent of the programs that were in place to help them. Well, let's just talk about farm, learn how to farm, apprentice paid, buy a farm. We created thousands of farmers after World War II with our troops that came home. And then I look at what's happened to my friends that I came home and they're just dropped in. And then we see like some of the highest suicide rates.

• 1:12:55Shawn Ryan?

  I think it's under farmers now.

• 1:12:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:58Shawn Ryan?

  I think farmers has the highest rate now.

• 1:12:59Speaker 03

  But I talk to people in Iowa all the time. It's like, look, in that time that we've lost 10,000 family farms in Iowa over the past 20 years, we've lost 10,000 of them.

• 1:13:09Speaker 03

  The suicide rate amongst our farmers went up 50%. And let me tell you, I don't know of any other politician in Iowa that's talking about it but me.

• 1:13:16Speaker 03

  None.

• 1:13:16Shawn Ryan?

  Fifty, went up 50%?

• 1:13:17Speaker 03

  50% in the last 20 years.

• 1:13:19Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:13:21Speaker 03

  And so my message to the people of Iowa is do not get distracted away from the things that actually matter, that really matter. Your neighbors dying in that way, your veterans dying in that way, all while we're being distracted by this, you know, tweak in a regulation or here we're going to get a little bit lower tax rates. You know, I tell people, we have the fastest rate of new cancer in the history of human civilization. And our kids are leaving our state faster than 46 other states. If your kids are leaving and your people are dying, you're not winning. That's not winning.

• 1:13:59Speaker 03

  I look at my campaign at the four things and those two things are two of the top things that I'm focused on. And what dumbfounds me is that I'm not joined by a chorus of people that are just like, of politicians that are just like, yes, finally, we've been waiting for somebody else to talk about this because they're not talking about it. You know, I found out that Iowa's kids are leaving the state at a rate faster than 46 other states. I found that out because I was curious as to what our rate was. And I started looking it up and found out in 2025, an extensive study was done on this. And I had, I have actually had politicians in the state reach out to me and say, where did you get that information? I'm like, it's publicly available and it maybe is the number one stat you could possibly

• 1:14:44Speaker 03

  track as an elected official. Are the people that are growing up here wanting to stay or leave? And I'm having to bring this up in this way, which I'm happy to do, but it's like, we need people to focus on the big issues and that's the reason I'm running.

• 1:15:03Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, they don't know because they're spending all their time hanging out with lobbyists.

• 1:15:08Speaker 03

  That's, yeah.

• 1:15:09Shawn Ryan?

  It's the truth. It's funny, but like, it's, it's real. They don't give a fuck. Like, all they care about is hanging out with lobbyists so they can enrich themselves. That's, that's it.

• 1:15:22Speaker 03

  This is why I go, something as simple as like knowing who put something into a piece of legislation, because I know it's not the legislators. I know this stuff's not coming from them. This stuff is written far too specifically. It's coming from industry. And that's the cozy relationship. I guess something that surprised me being in this maybe more than anything, I don't know if more than anything, but it's a big surprise, is how little you, research you have to do to become a very informed politician, like at the top 1%. How much you have to care to get away from the talking points of one party or the other and do your own research. Some of the things we're going to talk about with glyphosate.

• 1:16:08Speaker 03

  You know, I can't believe that they're just not on billboards everywhere. I mean, it's so egregious of what's happened. And but when I, let me go into this a little bit. When, when I first was talking about these pesticides, I've been following glyphosate for years. Part of the reason was my dad was a 28-year crop consultant in Iowa. And so his job was to go into a field, inspect for pests, weeds, bugs, fungus, things like that, and then write a report and send it to the farmer to say, here's what you should apply, what chemicals you should apply, because that's just what they, what they do, what they did.

• 1:16:48Speaker 03

  And then you fast forward to about five, six years ago, my dad gets diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, the exact type of cancer that's implicated in all of these Roundup lawsuits.

• 1:17:00Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit, man.

• 1:17:02Speaker 03

  And so I'm looking at this from the standpoint of like, and I think you could probably tell already talking to me, like, like, well, I hope, I care about this stuff. Like, I really do. And so when I'm thinking about my own dad, it's like, how, how much did that shorten his lifespan? He's in remission, but how many fewer days do I get with my dad? And the amount of funerals that I see for people that are dying in their 60s when their parents lived to be 80. There's a generational wisdom that's being completely lost. And so when you talk about all these things that like are going on in the world and in

• 1:17:44Speaker 03

  DC and the government, where our money's going, all these things, it's like, there's not something more important than human life. And when we're willing to turn our head away from that to protect industry, I mean, like, it's time for revolt, basically.

• 1:18:01Shawn Ryan?

  And that.

• 1:18:02Speaker 03

  And that's like, you know, with, with my campaign, that's like, you know, like I said, I've been told many times, I actually was told, sitting, gosh, I was meeting with a

• 1:18:16Speaker 03

  Hi, well, with an elected official in Washington DC once. This is six, eight months ago. And in that meeting, I thought he was kind of on the same page with me on some of these things, and I think he is to some extent, but people usually don't hear somebody talk about it with like the passion or the interest that I have. I got done talking about what's going on in my state from a cancer standpoint. And he literally said, "If you say these things on the, on the campaign trail, they will effing kill you." And I laughed, I just laughed, but I looked around at the people with him, they're laughing. And I, look, that could be figurative, of course, likely, but they know, they know

• 1:19:00Speaker 03

  the power these lobbies have. And so when you look at what's at stake is the life of my people. You know, like when you go into a gas station in Iowa and you see a collection jar for a kid with leukemia, or maybe two, or three now, and all the while, you'll hear a politician say something like, in Iowa, they say this all the time. "Well, we need to figure out what's causing it. We don't know what's causing it, what's causing the cancer rate."

• 1:19:30Shawn Ryan?

  Can't figure it out, huh?

• 1:19:32Speaker 03

  Can't figure it out. And one thing that he mentioned, and I kept hearing this, and again, like it was being spouted off without any research done to it, and I thought, well, what's the situation? He said, they kept saying, "Well, yeah, we have one of the highest levels of radon in the country." And what I, I looked into this, I was like, well, what's the truth to this? And it's like, well, first off, radon was, was deposited here by glaciers. Glacier, glacial activity ground this down and spread it out across the state. That's where it came from. So thousands of years, we've had this. In the past 30 years, we've had a hockey stick like graph on cancer rates in our state. And so this is part of what I'm fighting against.

• 1:20:15Speaker 03

  And I have to continue to say this, this is not about farmers, meaning like I'm not against farmers, I am one of them, I love them, they're my neighbors and family. And they're getting cancer. This is about large agriculture conglomerates lying to their customers and to the people about the safety of their products and getting away with it.

• 1:20:35Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, cancer isn't even an organic disease. So it would have to be caused by something that's not organic to earth. Glyphosate. Gee, I wonder. Let's.

• 1:20:49Speaker 03

  So oftentimes, this this conversation goes like to glyphosate. But I will just say to farmers that are my friends as well, like you will, they all know these companies are extorting them financially. They know it. They watch what's happening. They watch that they're getting charged more than what these same companies charge a foreign, a farmer in a foreign country. They know that every time there's an increase in commodity prices, their input costs are going to go up. That farm bankruptcies increased by 70% in Iowa last year, and John Deere raised their prices by five.

• 1:21:30Speaker 03

  And they know that truth, that they're just being extracted from. What I'm trying to bring a voice to is this idea that they're also lying to you. And they know they're lying to you. We have their documents that say and show that they're lying to you.

• 1:21:47Shawn Ryan?

  How are they lying? What specifically are they lying about?

• 1:21:52Speaker 03

  The safety of the products, that they that that they don't, I mean, that they don't believe it causes cancer. So let me take a step back here and just talk about agrochemicals for a minute. You know, something that'd be very interesting to know about glyphosate is from the traditional metrics that would have been tracked for pesticides. And, you know, people talk about pesticides. Pesticides is a blanket term, and it's, it includes herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, like different products that kill pests. And pests are defined not just as like a bug, but weeds and and bugs and fungus, things like that.

• 1:22:37Speaker 03

  Glyphosate, from an acute toxicity standpoint of like, if you get it on you, is it gonna hurt you? Is one of the safest we have. Like, one of the safest. Are you serious? Yes, from acute toxicity.

• 1:22:52Speaker 03

  When you look at other chemicals,

• 1:22:56Speaker 03

  and I've talked about a chemical a lot that's called Paraquat. Paraquat, you've probably heard of this. You know, in the 70s and 80s, it was used to burn down marijuana fields in the war on drugs. Also, if anybody is interested in learning more about Paraquat, you can read about the Japanese Paraquat poisonings, where somebody is putting a very small amount into bottles at vending machines, and the people would drink it and die 48, 52 hours later. Holy shit. Paraquat is so toxic that it is actually used in research settings to induce Parkinson's in rats and mice.

• 1:23:36Speaker 03

  It actually interacts with oxygen within the plant to create something that's called superoxide, basically a highly unstable form of oxygen. And then, I'm gonna simplify this, but basically it burns it from the inside out.

• 1:23:50Speaker 03

  It is a product that if you apply onto a plant in a matter of hours, it's destroyed. It is unbelievably toxic.

• 1:23:59Speaker 03

  I say that to just bring up this point. When we talk about this issue, we're gonna get into the issue of agency capture of our government. Because Paraquat was actually originally formulated by Syngenta, the Chinese, now Chinese-owned company.

• 1:24:18Speaker 03

  Syngenta sells this product still. And the country of China bans it. They won't even allow it to be sold in the country that owns the company. Fifty countries ban this product. If you wanna spray this product as a farmer, as an applicator, here's all you need to do. You have to take an applicator's class, which is an online class that lasts between 30 and 60 minutes. And you can go buy and use this product. There have been stories about people in medical journals that have gotten, through spraying for crops, have gotten enough on their skin that they literally just died.

• 1:25:04Speaker 03

  From topical exposure. Shit. And it does the same thing in our body. What it does is it enters in. And it actually accumulates in the lungs. It reacts with oxygen. And then it starts to create what's called superoxide. And it will, I'm using a simple term, burn you from the inside out. It'll just start to kill you. And long term exposure at lower doses is, gives you a two and a half times more likelihood of getting Parkinson's. Because the neurons in your brain, the dopamine neurons that operate with, they operate with a lot of oxygen.

• 1:25:48Speaker 03

  It starts to kill those because it's looking for oxygen. We know all this data. This is, like I said, they use it in laboratories to create Parkinson's. And it's still legal to be sprayed. It's still used on hundreds of thousands of acres in Iowa alone. So we talk about the safety of products. And whether or not our agencies are there to like protect us, they are not. They've been captured. And I have sympathy for farmers because they're in this cycle where they're using products and they're trying to fight weeds and all of these things. And they are operating on razor thin margins where the opportunity to try some other method

• 1:26:32Speaker 03

  of farming is almost nonexistent. And so many of these people just feel stuck with that.

• 1:26:41Speaker 03

  Damn. So paraquat is one of the most poisonous substances, literally, you know, one, if you had a spoon and you just had enough to cover the tip of the spoon and you, and you ingested it, you'd die.

• 1:26:58Speaker 03

  And we have tremendous amounts of evidence on this. And so when I get to glyphosate, you know, often I'll see people on X or somewhere saying, like, if you think glyphosate is bad, what about this, what about paracaidol? Like, I understand that. But when you get to glyphosate, there's so much that's being obscured about the truth of it and what's happening with it. Just to the basic point of the two separate types, that is, traditional glyphosate, the molecule that's pure, and the formulated glyphosate-based herbicides. These are the ones that are up to 50 times more toxic.

• 1:27:37Speaker 03

  The EPA does not require the registrant testing on these, just on the molecule, on the traditional glyphosate. So when the EU banned our version of glyphosate, they did it because the formulation was so toxic. It actually, pure glyphosate has trouble getting into your bloodstream without the surfactants that I mentioned earlier. But when you formulate it specifically to penetrate the dermis of a plant, it'll do the same thing to your skin, 30% of what's on your skin will enter your bloodstream, 10% of your cardiac output goes into your bone marrow. And in bone marrow, it disrupts the cell replication cycle.

• 1:28:20Speaker 03

  But here's something that I haven't yet talked about, and I want your listeners to understand, is that many people who avoid products that could have glyphosate in them, residues of glyphosate, that eat organic diets and all these things, they'll still show up that they have glyphosate in their urine. And the reason glyphosate is so talked about and so dangerous is because it's the most widely-used herbicide in the history of the world. It's used everywhere, everywhere, not just on ag applications, consumers buy it at Home Depot.

• 1:28:56Speaker 03

  Glyphosate is a chelator. It's looking to bind. It's actually one of the most powerful chelators, meaning I won't, I won't, I won't go deep into that, but it's looking to bind to things. What does it bind most closely to? What does it grab on to? Calcium. So there's actually papers coming out now that are, that are saying, they're theorizing that the reason this is happening, by the way, 1983, Monsanto did a study, a rat study, that they did not ever publish publicly, but the EPA had, and the EPA referenced, so we know basically what's in it. And in that study in 1983, they were testing, where

• 1:29:35Speaker 03

  does glyphosate stay the longest? What tissues? And where it stayed the longest was bone. And what they're, what the thought is now, is that the reason it is, is glyphosate is actually going into your bone marrow, it's attaching to calcium in your bones, and it's creating basically a repository of glyphosate on a slow release cycle. And so when you're releasing it into the bone marrow on a slow, slow, slow release cycle like that, and you're disrupting the cell replication cycle, because this is how cancer starts, is that you've damaged the DNA, and we know glyphosate is genotoxic, we know this, that it's creating like a bank of glyphosate in there. And that's why people who have stopped eating this

• 1:30:20Speaker 03

  stuff for a long time will have that continue to come out in their urine. And so what's happening with this is that we know that it causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. We have a ton of data and evidence that it's genotoxic, and that the cancer that's going to come out of this is non-Hodgkin's lymphoma primarily. But when the EPA doesn't even require you to test, now, for the people out there that are going to challenge me on this, they don't require you to do the long-form chronic toxicity tests on the glyphosate-based herbicides, the ones that are formulated, that are way more toxic. They require that just on the

• 1:31:00Speaker 03

  product. And this is how so much of this is obscured. You can pull out study after study, that will show that this product, pure, isn't, it doesn't have a high-risk profile, which by the way, most of those are industry studies, we know this, like the EPA, or in the EU banned this version of glyphosate. The industry submitted 1,500 studies, many of them they wouldn't even allow publicly to be released, but they're all industry studies. And so the big difference between the EU's determination on the safety and the EPA's was three primary things.

• 1:31:37Speaker 03

  Number one, the EU used glyphosate-based herbicides, the more toxic version that everybody's actually using. Nobody's spraying pure glyphosate. Number two, they looked at dose-dependent exposure, so not just like what's the overall cancer rate. And then there was one other category that they looked at that differentiated greatly, it's slipping my mind right now. But what the EU came to was that yes, this is a probable carcinogen. And they have far lower levels that are allowed in their bread, far lower levels allowed in their food. So the agencies have been captured.

• 1:32:20Speaker 03

  And now we are facing a situation where in Iowa, there's between six and nine agriculture chemicals within the wells in our state. Where it's everywhere.

• 1:32:35Speaker 03

  Is it even possible to get rid of it? Yeah, it is. You know, here's, I had somebody once tell me recently, he's like, hey, you need to be more positive, because I- I mean, out of the wells. Yeah, well- Can you get it out of there? Can it be- You know, I haven't done the research on wells. In soil, yes. So like glyphosate will stay in soil for a very long time. However, there are products, there are very natural products, it's broken down by bifidotype bacteria, very interesting, this on, on the, or not bifid, lactobacillus bacteria breaks it down. And so, we have amazing scientists and researchers that are helping to develop better products,

• 1:33:16Speaker 03

  but we have such a captured agency structure that oftentimes they're not able to get to market. Many times farmers have been lied to to say that like people that think glyphosate is bad, or you know, liberals hate farmers and all these things, when we're the exact opposite. So as far as, you know, wells, I don't know that, but I do know we can get it out of the ground. There's some really interesting studies have been done on that, and it, you can, 80 to 90% of it within seven months, using certain natural products.

• 1:33:47Speaker 03

  You know, if I could close on the glyphosate piece on one thing, it would be just to help people understand in this debate that's going on right now, all over, about what is happening with residual levels in our food. You know, Ron DeSantis just recently had that, his surgeon general released the findings of glyphosate in bread. And when you talk to people that are in the industry, and there's so many of these paid people that are on social media on X that are just like out there to put out this information, defending Monsanto, defending Bayer, defending glyphosate, defending what they are saying is like agriculture, when it's, when that's not what they're doing, they're not defending

• 1:34:31Speaker 03

  agriculture. Because they're also exploiting our farmers. You know, when you, what they often talk about is that, yes, but the exposure levels are so low, they're way below the tolerance levels that are allowed. And this is something that really infuriated me as I dug deep into this. When you look at tolerance levels that are allowed in food products, you think that, when you hear this, it's like, okay, well, if in wheat, five parts per million are allowed in wheat. You think, okay, well, that must be a level that's been deemed to be like, safe. Because if you have more than that, you can actually be illegal to sell the product. You can't sell it.

• 1:35:16Speaker 03

  It's, it's been considered adulterated. And so I was looking into this, and what I found out was this. That level can be changed by the industry if they petition the EPA. So for instance, in the 1990s, the allowable level of glyphosate on oats was 0.1 parts per million.

• 1:35:42Speaker 03

  When the industry started moving to desiccation, spraying this product to kill the plant at the end of the growing cycle, when they started to change the desiccation, they lobbied the EPA to change how much is allowed on oats. And remember, if you had over 0.1 parts per million in the 90s, it was illegal to sell the product of oats. They lobbied and got a 20,000% increase. Holy shit. 200 times what was previously allowed was now allowed. And here's why, because that's what they needed to be able to use the product to spray at the end of the growing cycle. So they went and said, what do we need this to be allowed at?

• 1:36:24Speaker 03

  What, how much glyphosate is actually on the product when it, after we do this desiccation process? And that's what we need to petition the EPA to get. And Monsanto did that and they got it. And so the upper level of this, you see the, the common question would be like, okay, well, what's the limit? Well, they use what's a reference dose modeling. Basically, the limit is when it gets to a point where they've determined that if it goes higher, and there's a buffer there, if it goes higher, it'll start causing organ damage. Holy shit, man. So there's a blank check to just say, hey, now it's five parts per million is allowed on wheat. But if we have a new practice that's going to increase that,

• 1:37:07Speaker 03

  we'll just petition the government and get them to go to 10 parts per million, even though they just told us that if you're above five, it's illegal to sell because it's not safe. It's captured. And so the industry is running the show. And the more people dig into this, the more you're going to realize that we are being lied to and misled. And part of my mission in this is not just to become a governor. It's to give a voice to these issues, to people who are talking about them and have other people that aren't paying attention to this realize, just like the medical establishment captured us during COVID,

• 1:37:49Speaker 03

  just like many, so many of the other lies we've seen our government do, we have big business running the show at the detriment of the health of our people.

• 1:37:59Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, before we end on glyphosate,

• 1:38:03Shawn Ryan?

  what do you think about this executive order? Eighteenth of February invoking the Defense Production Act to boost domestic glyphosate production, critical to national security. Love how they threw that in there. Section three of the order confers all immunity provided for in section 707 of the Act to domestic producers. The Act states, "No person shall be held liable for any act resulting from compliance with the order." Bayer is the only domestic producer. EWG President Ken Cook, in quotes, "Trump just gave Bayer a license to poison people." Full stop.

• 1:38:45Shawn Ryan?

  RFK Jr., who won a $289 million verdict against Monsanto, is an attorney, endorsed the order claiming it's about national security. Here's some maps. We're gonna put these up on screen. This is a map of the highest concentrated states of glyphosate.

• 1:39:09Shawn Ryan?

  Guess what number one is?

• 1:39:11Speaker 03

  Not anything I'm proud of.

• 1:39:13Shawn Ryan?

  Iowa. Here is another map, we're gonna put this on screen too. This is a concentration of cancer. What states have the highest concentration of cancer? Guess what state that is?

• 1:39:28Speaker 03

  Sean, you're saying things that are gonna get me very upset.

• 1:39:31Shawn Ryan?

  Iowa.

• 1:39:33Shawn Ryan?

  So, okay, so there's those. Now, since, since we're all fucking concerned about national security here, in 2025 alone, 618,000 people died of cancer in the United States. Now, isn't that a fucking national security concern? RFK? President Trump? Isn't that a fucking national security concern? I mean, I don't know what fucking scientist you guys are talking to, but... Here's the evidence. I know, it's fucking mind blowing, right? It's that simple. We just fucking solved the problem. But, you know, but.

• 1:40:14Speaker 03

  National security.

• 1:40:16Shawn Ryan?

  But what the fuck, like, what's more? Six hundred and eighteen thousand people died in twenty twenty five? And we're going on about a fentanyl crisis?

• 1:40:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:24Shawn Ryan?

  Where a hundred thousand people died. This is over six fucking times worse than the fentanyl crisis.

• 1:40:33Shawn Ryan?

  Then I'm all about stopping the fentanyl crisis. Let's get fucking real here. What? So what is the national security concern? Do you know?

• 1:40:41Speaker 03

  I don't know the national, I mean, look. If you want to talk about specifically the national security concern, the only thing that would ever make sense to me in this is that we're about to go to war. That would be it. Is that we're about to go to war and that they say that. Um, if we disrupt this. And the import of it. That we're going to disrupt the, you know, the food production of the country. But I, I've heard nothing about them. Let me just say, you know. I hate the politics of these things. Because when that came out, I was sitting. In, uh, at my house. And I was, it just popped up and I said, what is this? Because you have to understand, I, like, I've been fighting these things.

• 1:41:17Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:41:18Speaker 03

  Like, I've read the Monsanto cases when they're in court. Hundreds and hundreds of pages, pages, because I actually care about it. I want to know the arguments. I want to know how does a jury keep finding them guilty? And I do know how they keep finding them guilty and they are guilty.

• 1:41:32Speaker 03

  I've been talking to people in my own state about not passing these pesticide immunity bills. Even people that. Have as their constituency. The companies. And just saying like, look, here's what's happening. They're lying to us and I can prove this. I know how they're lying. And I've been, I have. Came out as a part of my campaign. To not put my head in the sand. And deny. The truth that's in front of me of what's going on. So that's the backdrop of which. I read this.

• 1:42:05Speaker 03

  And you know, the most common thing I'm reading about it is that it doesn't provide product liability immunity. That's a complete lie. There's nothing in the executive order, the Defense Production Act, or 707, that excludes product liability. If the order from the USDA, which by the way, this is going to be managed by the USDA, is to maintain full production and availability of the product, that they're ordered to do this, they'll use the same type of defenses that were used by Monsanto, by the way, when they created Agent Orange and poisoned so many people. They, the government in that case, now this was defense, I get that in the sense of we're at war, but we invoked the Defense Production Act.

• 1:42:49Speaker 03

  But in that case, when they were using Agent Orange, and there's so many harms from it, because it was a very nasty, nasty chemical, the government ended up paying $50 billion to people hurt by it, while the companies paid about $180 million. My bigger fear about this is that what we've just done is we have offloaded liability onto the taxpayer. And so, right when this came out, and this is again about me not being a politician, I voiced opposition to it. And it's not a popular thing to do, but when it comes to taking a stand for the right thing, you have to do it. And that could have negative repercussions for me, for sure.

• 1:43:33Speaker 03

  But none would be as bad as what you're saying about me going along with this. You know, Jordan Peterson said something I thought was very, was very deep. He said, "When you have something to say, silence is a lie." And that's really difficult in politics, because I think in something like this, the easiest thing for me to do would be to not immediately put out a tweet saying that, my tweet basically said this, "There's no potential ban on glyphosate. There's no pending ban on glyphosate. There's no pending shortage of glyphosate. There are only pending lawsuits of Americans who have been harmed by this product. This must be reversed."

• 1:44:18Speaker 03

  And so when I look at this and I hear all these people saying it doesn't provide absolutely will provide immunity, the word is used right in it, that's on purpose. When they go to court after they invoke the Advanced Production Act, when Bayer goes to court on new cases because they're still not putting a cancer warning on the label, if they just put a cancer warning on the label, future cases would be null and void because the entire thing is about failure to warn. That's all they have to do is admit culpability. Now, what will that do? It'll create a cascade effect of people that jump into lawsuits because, well, now you're admitting it. And so they can't to save face instead of doing the right thing.

• 1:45:00Speaker 03

  When they go to court in the future, they will hold a piece of paper that says, which has precedent, that courts will grant immunity citing the DPA. They'll hold that and say, we were ordered to do this. We didn't have a choice. The safety of the product is assumed in the order, basically. So, you know, my belief, you know, without going too far into this, is that I believe, and I might be naive on this, look, you hold me accountable, but I want Donald Trump to know the truth about this.

• 1:45:42Speaker 03

  I want him to understand that there's lobbyists that are doing something, trying to get him to do something, doing something, that will end up harming the people that he cares about and loves. I mean, he, there's a big talk about his, how much he loves Iowa. And I think that, look, I would love to get an audience with the guy and just say, this is what's happening in our state, and these are what these lobbying groups are doing.

• 1:46:16Speaker 03

  But I came out right after that was released, that same night, before I, I mean, I had to do a lot more research on it to understand how, how bad it really was. But I came out and said, this has to be reversed. And that, as I told you before, you don't need immunity for a safe product. The idea that the courts are coming to the wrong decision is completely wrong. Bayer's paid out tens of billions of dollars, they've settled hundred, over a hundred thousand cases, and they have the best attorneys in the world. They know what they're doing. They understand this. Immunity is the wrong way. Like immunity for me, like, you want, the Vaccine Immunity Act caused tremendous issues,

• 1:47:00Speaker 03

  this will cause tremendous issues from a health standpoint as well.

• 1:47:02Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, we just pulled the map up.

• 1:47:06Speaker 03

  Yep. This is what we're living in.

• 1:47:09Shawn Ryan?

  It's not a fucking coincidence.

• 1:47:10Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:47:11Shawn Ryan?

  Highest concentration of glyphosate, highest concentration of cancer.

• 1:47:15Speaker 03

  Yep. Yep. It's why I'm running.

• 1:47:19Shawn Ryan?

  Questions?

• 1:47:20Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:47:21Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, man. Want to take a break?

• 1:47:27Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:47:28Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:48:11Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:49:33Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Zach, we were having a little discussion out there about 30 seconds ago about how nobody in Iowa is talking about the cancer crisis, glyphosate, or what was the other one? Polyquat? Paraquat. Paraquat. Nobody's talking about it. None of the senators, none of the congressmen, none of the people running for you. You're the only one talking about it. Yeah, you know. And, and I'm just going to summarize it. We don't have to rehash it all, but I said, yeah, that's because they can't talk about it. We just got done talking about the lobbies. They can't talk about it. Yeah. And, and they don't give a shit. And it's, I think that's where

• 1:50:14Shawn Ryan?

  people are in disbelief that, that, that, that the human being that they elected into power doesn't give a shit about them. I, I, I don't think that's computing in people's brains. That they don't care. They don't care about you. They care. About who's lobbying them, who's telling them what to do.

• 1:50:34Speaker 03

  Getting reelected.

• 1:50:35Shawn Ryan?

  They justify it in their mind. You know, they've, they've, they, as all human beings do, every time we're doing something we shouldn't be doing, you always go through, well, you know, you, it's, it's ma, it's the mental gymnastics that people will do to justify shit that they shouldn't be doing in their head is fucking amazing.

• 1:50:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:50:52Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and we've all done it, but this is just, it's another level of evil, you know, that they're justifying.

• 1:50:59Speaker 03

  Choosing, just choosing to believe the lie. Like, that's a choice to believe the lie. Cause if you're gonna choose to believe a lobbyist on something this important, and not be willing to go as deep as I have or other people, you know, this is one thing that I've loved about Bobby Kennedy, is that, you know, there's this thought all the time about,

• 1:51:21Speaker 03

  you know, if you're elected, if you're in a position of authority, what you should, what you should be doing is getting experts around you. And delegating to these experts.

• 1:51:34Speaker 03

  But the experts brought us the COVID response that we had. And what you have to be willing to do is say, I'm not delegating the most important things. I need to be, I need to have the proper amount of knowledge to make the right decision on these issues. So,

• 1:51:53Speaker 03

  so when, you know, Bobby's talking about vaccines, he understands the situation. You're not gonna bring some expert in that like is completely counter to him when he knows the truth about what's happening.

• 1:52:06Speaker 03

  But when you say this, that the politicians aren't talking about, about this, it's true. It's very true. I mean, I, I, right now, I'm, uh, on the political sense, I'm yelling into a void.

• 1:52:19Speaker 03

  But on a voter sense, I can't go to a room, you know, we've had a couple, uh, town halls of the past week. One was over a hundred and fifty people showed up. Another one was close to eighty in these, in, you know, small, smaller restaurants, packed house. And when I get to the fourth point about what my campaign's about, which is stopping the cancer crisis in my state. And I talk about what's going on with big companies lying to us about the safety of their products. Eighty, ninety percent of the heads in the, in the audience are nodding. These are Republicans. The voters know what's going on. The problem is, there hasn't been.

• 1:52:58Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you say it's just Republicans?

• 1:53:00Speaker 03

  What do you mean?

• 1:53:00Shawn Ryan?

  You don't think Democrats give a shit about cancer?

• 1:53:03Speaker 03

  I just mean in this room, it's Republicans.

• 1:53:05Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:53:06Speaker 03

  So, no, this, no, just to, in this, in my rooms, I'm talking to Republicans in the primary. And so traditionally, Republicans are the ones that are not going against what some of these big companies are saying. But I'm saying the voters, they know, they know what's going on. And yes, the beauty of, of, of what I am running on and the hope that I am running on, whether it's keeping our kids in the state, or saving our family farms, or making our education system number one, or saving the cancer, solving the cancer crisis, is that these are bipartisan issues. I have people comment on X and things like this that are, you know, criticizing Iowa Democrats, for saying, "How do we let a Republican beat

• 1:53:48Speaker 03

  us to the punch on this? How do we do that?" And it's both sides, on the political side, on the, on the elected side of politicians, both sides have been silent on this completely. And then they'll give excuses like alcohol rates, or they'll give excuses like radon, or they'll, they'll say, "It's, it's, we need to have a greater tax on cigarettes." It's like, this is, this is, this is happening right now in Iowa. And I'm like saying to people, cigarettes have an inelastic demand curve, meaning when you tax cigarettes, you're just taking more money because they're addictive products and they're going to continue using them. Meanwhile, Nevada has one of the highest smoking rates in the United States and one of the lowest cancer rates.

• 1:54:33Speaker 03

  This is about, again, coming back to being willing to tell the truth, even if it means somebody tells me that they're going to destroy me. You know, it means they're going to come out and attack me or my family, or whatever it is. This is what I, I knew I was getting into. It's why this conversation is so important, because the voters are talking about this. The people are talking about it. You know, right now in Iowa, we have the world's largest nitrate removal system on our water supply in Des Moines, meaning from the runoff that comes off of farm fields, I could talk deeply about what's happening there, but the nitrogen that's ending up from fertilizer in our streams and rivers is getting to our major population center.

• 1:55:16Speaker 03

  And it's so much that we have the largest one in the world to remove nitrates.

• 1:55:20Shawn Ryan?

  Geez.

• 1:55:21Speaker 03

  And often it can't keep up, meaning they have to like, put notices in that you can't water your lawn because you're stressing the system too much because we can't filter these chemicals out fast enough.

• 1:55:31Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 1:55:32Speaker 03

  Yes, this is, they happened last summer in Iowa.

• 1:55:37Shawn Ryan?

  You know, wow. I mean, in what is, what are, what is the state place population wise? It's not a densely populated state. It's not like it's over, it's not like Florida where they're worried about flushing the fucking toilets because so many people are moving there and they're just destroying all the farmland there and turning it into condos and apartments. It's crazy, you know, but there, but Iowa isn't like that. You don't have a house five feet from another house, five feet from another house. You know what I mean?

• 1:56:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:56:07Shawn Ryan?

  It's, it's, it's spread out.

• 1:56:09Speaker 03

  It is.

• 1:56:09Shawn Ryan?

  It's very lowly dense. What, do you know what it is? I'll bet it's in the lowest.

• 1:56:15Speaker 03

  It's very low population density in Iowa. I mean, our population's three, just around three million. Um, and I don't know what the density though is, but it's very, it's very sparsely populated.

• 1:56:26Shawn Ryan?

  So that's what I'm saying. And they have the largest water treatment plant to take what night, what did you say?

• 1:56:31Speaker 03

  Nitrates. So like nitrogen fertilizer out.

• 1:56:35Shawn Ryan?

  Like, look at that shit, man.

• 1:56:37Speaker 03

  You know, it would.

• 1:56:37Shawn Ryan?

  It's not even that many people using the fucking water. You have the biggest one in the world?

• 1:56:42Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:56:42Shawn Ryan?

  And they can't keep up.

• 1:56:45Shawn Ryan?

  That's insane.

• 1:56:46Speaker 03

  They can't keep up.

• 1:56:47Shawn Ryan?

  That's how many fucking chemicals are getting dumped in.

• 1:56:50Speaker 03

  We actually had this winter. So what happens is, um, now look, again, when I look at this, I don't look at it from the standpoint of like, farmers are purposefully doing these things. A lot of times I look at the associations that know better and they know what's going on and they give cover, but like.

• 1:57:14Speaker 03

  In Iowa, what's happened to cause this is that one of the technologies that farmers have used most recently to increase yield has been field tiling. So, three feet under the ground or so, there's a perforated pipe. It takes, basically what happens when you have a really wet season, a lot of rain will come down, the water table will rise. When the water table rises, these, it moves into waterways, areas that water goes into, and these tiles, these pipes, bring the water out in daylight, dump it directly into a stream. And so, over the past 20 years, we've started what's called pattern tiling, which is like,

• 1:57:56Speaker 03

  we are putting these corrugated tubes all over the fields, 10 and 20-foot separation, and it's to make sure that the land is farmable, so it's draining water. What's happening there is that when you have a really wet season, the water table rises, and you have an hydrosmoner, you have nitrogen that's been applied to the field, and it rains, well, it can't soak down into the soil to purify. So it goes directly into these tiles, and the tiles drain directly into the streams, and the streams drain directly into, in Iowa, the Raccoon River is one of them. The Raccoon River is either the most or the second most polluted tributary in the United States.

• 1:58:40Speaker 03

  Wow, wow. And so, when I look at this, I just say- People are probably swimming, tubing, all kinds of shit. We have so many lakes that there's notices on signs that you can't swim in them. Are you, because of the chemicals? Because there's so many products in there. Holy shit. Your listeners can go on and Google this, and you'll find stories of like a woman, this is last year, maybe two years ago, who didn't know that, jumped in, and her skin got all red, like it was just, you know, burning. But we have-

• 1:59:13Speaker 03

  Lakes in Iowa with such high levels of of nitrates and products that swimming is barred in them in Iowa. The Eden of the United States. What people, this is what I go back to. I think when people look at Iowa, they think of like the Norman Rockwell painting of like the cows on the hill and you have the this and the beautiful stream and you know, when General Albert Lee was coming through Iowa, when they're first on their trek to going up, they're actually going up the Des Moines River. When he was coming through Iowa, he actually said that in all of his travels, and mind you, he'd been all over the country at this point, he'd never seen a place as beautiful as this. That's what we came from.

• 1:59:57Speaker 03

  Now Iowa is the most terraformed place, I believe, on the face of the earth, meaning we've done more to our landscape. So when I talk about the water quality issue, it's a hot button issue. But I've talked to developers in Des Moines who've said, I can't even sell a house if I don't pre-install a reverse osmosis system in here. And I think when I talk about this in the campaign, I just go back to this, I believe that Iowa families are just looking for something that they can count on. Clean water is one of them. Having a safe community is another one. An education system that's not bottom half.

• 2:00:39Speaker 03

  These are the common things that people are just looking for. And it's not too much to ask that your government focuses on giving you, your government focuses on making sure things that you should just be able to count on are there. Here's one thing I'll tell you about the nitrate removal system. So it'll remove, I don't even know the exact number of how many pounds of nitrogen. Up until recently, after they removed it, they just dumped it back in the river. Get the fuck out of here. Are you, no way. I'm serious.

• 2:01:20Speaker 03

  They now have some biological methods to where it'll break down the products. But the way to get rid of it was to put it back in the river. So.

• 2:01:33Speaker 03

  Again, we have to have clean water in our state. We have to have good education. Our farmers have to be able to make money and not be extorted. And I believe that one of my goals, I've said to people is that, look, over 20 years, we've lost 10,000 family farms. There's no term limits on the governor of Iowa. And I've made it very clear, like, this is not what I want to do for my life. But I want to make it so there's 10,000 new family farms in the state. Or that by the end of my second term, the majority of the food served in Iowa's schools actually comes from our state. Common sense things that if we had, if we had our eye on the ball, we'd say, this is

• 2:02:18Speaker 03

  just good to do. We should employ our people, supporting our kids, to grow their food. But it hasn't. 95% is imported. And it's garbage. Like, we know what.

• 2:02:32Shawn Ryan?

  How many other people are running?

• 2:02:34Speaker 03

  In the primary, there's five people running in it.

• 2:02:37Shawn Ryan?

  Five people?

• 2:02:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:02:39Shawn Ryan?

  Because as of this recording today, Polymarket, are you familiar with Polymarket? They give you a 25% chance of winning Iowa, the governor Republican primary on June 2nd.

• 2:02:53Speaker 03

  We're just getting started.

• 2:02:53Shawn Ryan?

  That's pretty good. I think it was 6%. Then you went on Tucker and it went.

• 2:02:57Speaker 03

  Went up. And you know, this is all about getting a message out.

• 2:03:02Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think, why do you think Polymarket jumped that much? I mean, we.

• 2:03:08Speaker 03

  Nobody knows who I am.

• 2:03:09Shawn Ryan?

  What's resonating with you?

• 2:03:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think the number one thing is, nobody knows who I am. I've never ran for office. So one of the people on there, the only reason that they're as high as they are is because they have, and they've been elected, and they have name recognition. But I know that the message that we're putting forward about putting Iowa first, about saving our family farms, the things I just mentioned, I know those things resonate. I don't need a poll to tell me they resonate. I hear it from my neighbors. I. So often, when I'm talking to them, they're talking about issues in private that politicians aren't talking about in public. They're not talking about them. You go to the cafe and you lean in and you hear what the farmers are talking about. It's the things I'm talking about. The problem is they felt like they haven't had anybody, I believe, and I'm not

• 2:03:54Speaker 03

  going to speak for them, but, and this is how I felt, that there's nobody out there that's willing to give them a voice. That's wanting to say, we shouldn't give a Chinese company millions of dollars of tax breaks, paid for by Iowans. That we shouldn't have a data center getting $529 million in property tax abatement. That we shouldn't allow our farmers to be exploited, or let hedge funds buy our homes. That Iowa, being an Iowan and living in the state of Iowa, means something significant. And what it means is not about an economy. It means something about culture and who we are as a people.

• 2:04:35Speaker 03

  One of the things that I've had to wrestle with in this whole process is coming away from this idea of libertarian economic thinking, which was very pervasive when I was a kid, when I was growing up. And that the only thing we should care about is what the market says is good. The market will just determine it.

• 2:04:55Speaker 03

  And I don't, like, I don't know how you could look back on what's happened to our country, to our culture, to the hollowing out of our communities. I mean, look, even something as simple as, in these small towns, we've always had these country food stores. Well, they're going out of business and what's coming in? Dollar General. And who is the largest shareholder of Dollar General? BlackRock. So the money that used to circulate within my small community, because the owner of the grocery store said, and actually, I'm very thankful we do have a country foods, but Dollar General set up shop 200 yards away?

• 2:05:28Shawn Ryan?

  The Dow was at 50,000. I don't know what you're complaining about, Zach. The Dow was at 50,000.

• 2:05:37Speaker 03

  Well, my, our communities are not there. Our communities are struggling, like, really struggling.

• 2:05:46Speaker 03

  And there's the idea that I talked about in the economic thinking. I call it a religion of economic thinking. I think people have been captured by this religion that says like, whatever the market says is best is best. And I'm talking mostly politicians and people and think tanks and all of these things that don't spend time in the community. And I've said something that I think people think is kind of radical is that, look, I'm going to choose community values over shareholder value every day. Because that's what my great, great grandfather was here for. That's why he came here. He didn't come here to make some company. And I'm not against business. But the extractive nature of what's happened in business in my state is undeniable. And it's making our state unrecognizable.

• 2:06:30Speaker 03

  Just when you look at the 24 million acres of ground that's in crops and us losing 10,000 family farms over 20 years. Like, that's life. That's stories.

• 2:06:44Speaker 03

  One of my favorite stories that I talk about this, and I'm bringing this up now because I just mentioned the idea of stories. Teddy Roosevelt famously said that I intend to be a preaching president to talk about the values of what it means to be an American. And he did. I mean, we got man in the arena from him. Something that I have to find myself reading a lot just to remind myself. Okay. It's been a lot, lot harder things.

• 2:07:13Speaker 03

  When I go out and I talk to people or I'm at an event, I'm at an event. I'll start to tell my family history a bit that I've mentioned to you.

• 2:07:23Speaker 03

  There's not one person in the room, usually, that if I didn't go back one or two generations with them and their family story, that we just don't have an almost identical story. Of people who came over here looking to provide a better life and pass something on to their kids. But like, and in our case, that was farmland in a major way. And to create something that they didn't have for themselves. And to build their church.

• 2:07:51Speaker 03

  We have a shared story. And my hope is to be able to be somebody who's preaching about that. That the fact that more Iowans served in the Civil War per capita in the United States is something to be dang proud of. That we should just like, but that should be taught in every single history class in Iowa. That the people who came here before you were courageous. They wanted to build something for you and they were never going to meet you. And that you should be proud of your heritage. One of my favorite stories on our farm, I'm a pilot, my dad's a pilot, both of my grandpas were pilots.

• 2:08:26Speaker 03

  And my grandpa in 1940s, he bought a Taylorcraft airplane for $700. And great grandpa mowed a runway in the bean field. And he learned to fly there and that became his whole profession career, as I mentioned. And you know, that took him off the farm. He was the first generation to leave the farm. And he went off and, you know, he worked at Iowa companies as a pilot. He was very good at what he did. He was very proud of what he did. And I think that back then, that was kind of the idea.

• 2:09:07Speaker 03

  That take a step away from the farm. Try something new. And I'm very thankful for what he did because he provided a life for me and my family and my grandma, who's 93 years old today, who's still living on his pension and on like what he created for her. So when I look at me coming back full circle, I think about my grandpa like all the time at the farm, whose initials were carved in that post. And just to say, why am I doing this? I'm trying to do something that I hope would make him proud. That he'd say, see what's going on in our country, see what's going on in our world and say, we've got to get back to these roots.

• 2:09:51Speaker 03

  So that's my mission.

• 2:09:53Shawn Ryan?

  I think that's a great mission, Zed.

• 2:09:57Shawn Ryan?

  I think your message is gonna resonate with a lot of people.

• 2:10:00Speaker 03

  I'm

• 2:10:00Shawn Ryan?

  I know it is. Everybody I talk to is worried about this. It doesn't did I I mean I'm I don't even give a shit Republican Democrat anymore. Like I said, I just want somebody with a spine that's gonna stand up for the people. You know, it sounds like you you might be that guy and and um

• 2:10:21Speaker 03

  Well, don't endorse me yet. Wait to see what I do.

• 2:10:23Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, I'm not endorsing.

• 2:10:25Speaker 03

  Just kidding.

• 2:10:25Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not.

• 2:10:26Speaker 03

  I just heard you talk about the other ones. Let let me let me go out and prove myself.

• 2:10:33Speaker 03

  I'm just thankful for you. Let me have this conversation. And hopefully bring a voice to people that have felt like they didn't have one.

• 2:10:44Shawn Ryan?

  Best of luck, Dan.

• 2:10:45Speaker 03

  Thanks, sir.

• 2:10:46Shawn Ryan?

  Cheers.

• 2:10:59Shawn Ryan?

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