Paul Hawken
Appearances
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
You know, I never knew that was there. And that happened, you know, when Lewis and Clark went over the Rockies and different explorers, you know, like there's huge lands there. Well, there's landscapes of biology there. that we are now broaching and going into. And I hope we do it well.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
But whatever we do, we are learning that we are part of a extraordinary web of life, far more so than we actually knew.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
It's just our minds that have sort of deluded us. And of course, all our media and social media and everything that we are individuals, the only individuals in the world are in comic books and Westerns. There is no such thing as an individual. And yes, we have a distinct mind and we can think things that are very peculiar to us and not anybody else.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Yeah, there is a story about an orphanage. And children were brought there for whatever reason. They lost their mother. Who knows? And Claire Davis, who ran the thing, decided to run an experiment because children are very fussy when they're small. about what they will and won't eat. They'll push it away, they don't like the taste, whatever.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And we can connect that and we have extraordinary language to do that with. But that doesn't mean biologically we're individuals or we're separate. And so part of the reason for writing Carbon, the Book of Life is just to see the climate movement, frankly, fail. in its story and its narrative and in its impact.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so what she did with her nurses, they had the children around the table, oftentimes holding them, but they were very little, and they had 32 different foods. And they had fruits, they had vegetables, they had meats, they had dairy, they had some things like liver and things that, you know, you can't imagine a child wanting liver at two.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
But they put them out and they let the child choose what she or he wanted to eat. And children came in there actually who were not well. I mean, they came in sick, you know, or with the disease. And she watched them heal themselves by what they chose.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And after six years, a pediatrician who had worked with them all six years to make sure everything was cool said, these are the healthiest children I've ever seen in my life. And again, they would go on binges, like a binge, you can't binge on healthy food, but I mean, go this way for a while, then they go this way and they do this. Every child chose differently.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
They didn't choose all the same things. They didn't pay attention to what the others were eating. And so they were healed or they became very healthy. And then now we have a culture where people don't know what to eat. We have food designed purposefully to be addictive by organoleptic scientists who work for Pepsi's and Mars and Coke and all the ultra processed food companies.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And we probably have the sickest population of young people in the world in the United States. And because that innate wisdom about what to eat was banished by chemical manipulation by scientists. And so when you see obese or whatever, children, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, whatever, who are sick and not doing well, have different diseases, Of course.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
He was cured. Then he never wanted to eat it again. That was it. I said, how did he know? And that innate intelligence is there in everybody. And now it's completely covered up by just the distractions and the communication, the algorithms, the food. I mean, everything is going at us and basically destroying our core and native intelligence. It really is. And we see it.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Absolutely. And I think what's happened is we look to centrality and power. for change. In other words, we think Conference of the Parties is that way, Climate Conference of the Parties. There is a Biodiversity Conference of the Parties. It was in Cali last year in Colombia. And, you know, politicians and corporates and NGOs get together.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And when I say fail, 99 point, you put in the integer of the people who live here do nothing about it on a daily basis. And that's been true for 50 years.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
You know, there was Azerbaijan last year in Baku and tried to come up with a, like the Paris Mandate came out of the conference of the parties, like, We, being all the countries in the world, agree that this should be so, we should do that, etc. Well, it's failed every single time for 29 years. And nothing's worked.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And the reason for that is, I'm not trying to detract from the people who attend and their sincerity, but it is, nature isn't top-down. No top-down solution is going to fix the problem. The very verb fix is the problem. because that makes it other, like we're gonna fix nature, we're gonna fix the climate crisis, we're gonna combat it, we're gonna tackle it.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
If you look at the language that imbues the, and I would say rather sincere belief or concern about where we are, I'm not decrying that, the language absolutely guarantees failure. Because you can't fix. You can't fix something we don't even fully understand.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
You can either work with the flow of life, or you can be in that flow of life, you can respect the flow of life, or you can take, extract, destroy, and for whatever purpose you think you have a right to do. And that's what's happening in the world. And so we... Hear that term, it's an extractive economy, very much so.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I mean, 500 years ago, when the Portuguese and the Spanish and the Dutch and others came, the English, of course, came out of Europe, I mean, they basically took whatever they wanted. They took people, they took cultures, they took land, they took crops, they took anything and brought it home, sold it, made a lot of money.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
and maybe even more ships to go out and extract from the living world, minerals, silver, gold, et cetera. And we're still in that economy. Absolutely. In fact, even more so than we were in the 16th and 17th century. And so how do we change that? I mean, because people are insecure, they want more, they don't want less. And there has to be a point where we realize that more is creating less.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I mean, we're getting more and more and more. You can see it in our stores, you can see it in people's lifestyle, you can see it in homes, you can see it in the cars, whatever. But actually, there's less and less and less. The planet is starting to starve, starting to be decimated, starting to be not just deforested, but reduced. Look at what's happening for batteries in the Teslas.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Put the Tesla side or Elon Musk aside, The batteries have cathodes and anodes, of course, in storage. Cathodes made of what? I mean, what do we make it out of? Well, we make it out of cobalt. Where does the cobalt come from primarily? The Congo. What's happening in the Congo? Well, besides war, Paul Kagame and Rwanda, there's different armies, but children...
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
are the miners in the Congo for cobalt, for our batteries, for our Tesla. And they're digging holes, really, with no pit stops, nothing to prop up the land or the soil. Tunnels to go in and bring out carbon. Children being buried alive. These are six years old, seven years old, eight years old. This is for our Teslas. And any other thing? With all due respect, yeah. I'm not Elon musking this.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I'm just electric car, an EV. And other batteries. Or iPhone.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
No, yeah. Absolutely right. And like I said, I wasn't trying to demonize Tesla. I was just trying to... give an example because it's so ubiquitous now as an EV. But the point being is nobody thinks about that. Nobody feels that. Nobody would want to do that. Of course, find me a person on the street and say, yeah, I want children to basically die getting cobalt for my cathode on my battery.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I mean, nobody wants that. But we are in a system that's doing that. And it's once, twice, thrice, four times, five times removed from any possibility of awareness or connection. This is what I mean by we're so violently disconnected from each other, from place, from what we buy, what we eat, the farms, what's happening on the farms. And so forth. And that's the state of the world.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so in that, you have these narratives about fighting, tackling, combating climate change. And for me, and I have to say, I'm just like aghast at that language. because it's the same mindset that is causing and has caused the situation we're in today. Very male language, I might say, very gendered language. Fixing is another one of those. I love to fix things.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I think that's okay, better than okay. But you don't fix something You actually find out who you are and where you live and how this earth works. And that is missing from the dialogue. And even when we use the word biodiversity, what does that mean? I mean, it's code word. Of course, we do know what it means, but we don't.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And one of the examples I give in the book is a scientist in New York who, a botanist, he wanted to know how many roots there Because that's where nourishment comes from. A plant comes from the soil. The energy comes from the sun, right? And carbon dioxide. Mix it well and you have sugar and the plant grows. But the plant sends down roots for moisture and for nutrients.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
So he wanted to know how many roots of ryegrass, a kernel, single kernel of rye. And using an electron microscope, he counted 14 million. 14 million, it's just like a ridiculous number. And 10 million were real roots and 4 million were hair roots. So we put that aside, 10 million roots. Well, what are they doing down there? They have hyphae on the tips.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
They're connected to mycelia, connected to fungi. And they're transacting, they're conversing. Conversing is the wrong word, communicating with the mycelia and vice versa. And basically the plant's saying, I need what? I like the nitrogen, I want phosphorus, I want selenium in some cases, zinc or whatever.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
The mycelium can understand it, and then in its network, which is extraordinary, it's producing it, bringing it back, and swapping it for carbohydrates. That's a single kernel of rye. Now, just step outside, look, go to a forest, look. We have no idea. And what we do know now, Drew, is that we've recorded mycelia. They are communicating.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
It came from good science. There's no question that when you increase triatomic particles in atmosphere, you know, molecules and water, it's one of them, by the way, CO2 is another one, that they reflect back infrared rays. And the infrared comes from the sun, heats the planet, heats the atmosphere.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
It's a clicking sound, like the Botswana and the San people in Botswana, sperm whales. It's a clicking sound. And it's in patterns. not just random. And the patterns repeat. And then there's series of patterns that clump together and repeat. And Adam Adamatsky at the Royal Society of London says, these are sentences. And of course, other mycologists have said, well, no, you're wrong.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
But he's saying, well, what is it then? what is it this systematic repetition of clicking sounds in series with spaces just like morse code in a way uh it's communication and and again you say well what does that have to do with you know climate change and this and that and a heating planet and in biodiversity but it has to do with you
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And that is, if you see the world as it is, more like it is than what we believe it is, it changes you. I mean, Carving the Book of Life isn't a solution. It's not trying to change anything other than present the possibility of you seeing yourself in a different way. And through wonder, through a sense of...
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
oh my gosh i i never knew or how could that be or really a bat flew into my uh room last night you know where we were sitting so beautiful going in circles going in circles going in circles we're the only country in the world to think bats are are bad you know culture everywhere else in the world they're sacred they're and this is sacred beautiful beautiful bat going round and round.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And of course, I went to the other room and opened up a door and it, you know, it went away. But it was just like, it felt like a blessing to me as opposed to, oh, my God, there's a bat in the room. Of course, there's a bat in the room. Isn't that extraordinary?
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
You increase the number of CO2 molecules in the air, and a certain amount of heat is reflected back. And as you have more molecules, there's more heat. And that's global warming 101. We've known that since 1856. So the rhetoric and the concern is, well, let's stop putting them up there.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Well, I mean, it's a perfect description. And I would say the Chinese, Xi Jinping, will not decide the future. Nature will decide all of our futures. That's going to be, they're the decision, it's the decision maker of whether we survive or not survive, whether we live well and beautifully and, you know, or don't in warlike conditions. So your question is, well, where do we go to from here?
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And that's what Project Drawdown was about, which I created in 2013, which is, can we just bring it back home, please, and stop putting it up there and get some sort of equilibrium that we had at one time in terms of the climate, the atmosphere, heating, warming, et cetera. And so it makes sense.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
It's a great, great question. First of all, I do not in any way, I'm not an anti-people person, nor do I go around decrying or criticizing how people are living. That's not my job. That's not my role.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
uh that's not how i feel and so what people doing you know in china or any other group you know is doing what people have always done they've tried to take care of their family to feed their children to be warm to be safe you know these are basic human needs and they're not being met by the way i would say five Over 5 billion people wake up every morning with threatened.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
They wake up and they're worried about food, safety, security, education, health, work, money, their home. I mean, the list goes on, you know, the current existential threat. And what the climate movement has done for years is talk about future existential threat. Well, that doesn't really help people. They need to be served now. They didn't determine the world that they got born into.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
They weren't part of the decision-making process. And so they will reach towards the resources that are available to them and educate themselves and do whatever they can to make a better life. Okay, let's step back from that for a minute. Is there then the question back to you, can we provide human needs? Human wants, we'll put that aside for a minute. Okay. Desires, that's different.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I'm not decrying what we did at Project Write-On or that logic, but in the process of doing that, we separated ourselves from cause. We're looking at cure, but we have to go upstream to cause. What's the cause? Why are we putting it up there? And why are we putting it up there in massive ways with a rhetoric and a story? And I say the story now is the climate narrative that is completely BS.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
But human needs, true human needs, including security, joy, culture, music, you know, I mean, I consider those things. needs as well and so forth. Can we do that in such a way that we create more life as we do it instead of less? That's really what it comes down to, Drew. And so we have to be educated that we're just trashing this place for our needs and wants, okay? Let's not go after that.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Let's go after how do we get there? And is there a way that we can flip that? And I say, yeah, there is. Absolutely. But you have to want to do it. Right? And you have to have education and knowledge and ways of doing it. And so there's a company in Northern California called Oath and it invented a biostimulant, which is over 114 different microbes. Healthy soil is a biome. We have a biome in us.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
No chemical fertilizers. Okay. In other words, it's going with what soil wants to be instead of trying to trash it and top dress it with chemicals that were embedded by the Germans to make better bombs and better poison gases, right? So we think, I think, everybody thinks healthy, available, affordable food is a basic human right.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so it's not about saying, oh, well, chemical farmers and this and that makes them wrong. No, it's about, look at this. Look what's being discovered. Look what's being invented. Look what's being practiced. Look what's being implemented around the world. And what I would say to a larger level, I mean, I think most people don't feel like they have control. They don't have a say.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
They don't have a voice and so forth. But underneath all that, I said there's not top-down solutions, but there is a different solution, which is there are – There's thousands and thousands and thousands of communities in the world that are living differently, that are growing their food differently, that are relating to each other differently. We don't hear about them.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
They don't light up our amygdala like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and social media do. They're small.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
you can ignore them fine but at eth the university of zurich and so forth the carter lab has called restore.eco you know no e on the restore and you can put that in the show notes and it's got over 200 000 areas in the world where people are restoring life on earth and you can write the location and the name of the organization or who's doing it and so forth we don't hear about that
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
So I think humanity is having a response. And it's a beautiful response. And it's happening all over the world. And we just don't know about it. We don't hear about it.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Yes, I do. I do. There's a book called, Are We Smart Enough to Understand How Smart Animals Are? That's the title of the book. And so to think that that's true isn't to then say, I understand or I know this is why. I can't explain it. I believe that to be true. But I...
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
There's a lot of things you can not explain biologically and go back over a billion years that have emerged from the planet that we don't have an explanation for, we really don't. And it'd be hard to imagine that if there's 3.4 trillion, Creatures, these are our earthmates, these are our roommates here, and they're talking every day, right? They are, they're communicating.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And part of that BS is that we're in an energy transition. And if we get to net zero by 2050, we're going to be good to go, you know? And that's just not true. We're not in an energy transition whatsoever. we're actually using more coal, gas, oil and wood than we did last century and the century before that and the century before that.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Maybe talk's the wrong verb, whatever verb works for you is fine, but they're communicating. Every cell in your body is communicating, with the cells next to it and around it, right? So it's hard to imagine that in that collective conversation, and again, some scientists are always on a conversation. They can think what they want. I think what I want.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
But the science is going to a human conversation that is now, that's encompassing all of life. And it's hard to imagine that all of life doesn't have a kind of an emergent intelligence that is communicable, that is communicated and being heard or being acted upon.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
um yeah so i do believe that's true actually the gaia hypothesis uh and james lovelock came up with and he came up with that hypothesis he's trying to figure out how earth made the atmosphere because they were talking about terraforming mars way back then well we have to create an atmosphere we can't really terraform it unless we have air oxygen you know atmosphere
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And he said, well, I can't figure that one out, but I have to figure out how we created this one. And if you read, he's a scientist, he read about it saying, we can't really explain how this one got created. And, but we do know that the creation and life and the atmosphere, so forth, were a symbiosis, you know, it was a symbiosis.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so we know that ocean phytoplankton bloom change, you know, when the temperature changes and that there's this, the earth is constantly adjusting. to itself, really, because the atmosphere and the biosphere are the same thing. Just like you have air and gas inside your lungs, but you don't call that your atmosphere. You're one body and you have gas and you have solid.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
It's just like the earth is the same thing. That little thin veil, the blue thing that encloses a planet is the planet. But yeah, you go into areas of sort of mysticism and so forth, mystery. I love mystery, but in my book, I stick to science actually. When we did Project Data, Project Regeneration, we had a phrase that said, in God we trust, all others bring data.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
So everything in the book is about data. It's not about supposition or belief.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so what I wanted to do is get to step back and look at it as a whole, not to be solutionist and not to say, look at, listen up, I know the way, you know. No, but to actually provide people another way of seeing the world, which is what they're in. So that's about being in a world.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
That's a really good question. And I could go back in my head. early youth too, and talk about plant medicine, you know, which I started to use when I was 20 years old. And always so with respect to the teachers and sources, you know, as opposed to just molecules or things that, you know, changed your brainwaves.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
So I was very fortunate to be around people who were very reverent about plant medicine and what it means and how it was used and not as you didn't go dancing with it, you know. And it wasn't about parties and it wasn't about that. It was about introspection. And then that introspection really was... Maybe introspection is the wrong word.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
But that inner journey and so forth was inevitably connected to everything you saw. And the way you saw it, I remember it so well. And because of that, I went into the natural food business, actually. And I no longer took any plant medicines. Not because I... thought they were bad or shouldn't or anything, I just stopped. I felt, I'm good.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so subsequently to that, I would say it had more to do, not to say I didn't have experiences when I was a child, but it had more to do with being in nature and literally being in it and listening, watching, seeing, and then just being pretty much appalled by my ignorance by what I didn't know, you know, by lack of certainty, by just questions. And that exists to this day.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And I think what happened, Drew, is that when I was young, my home was a really bad place to be in. It wasn't safe. So I spent every moment I could outside. And I always felt safe in nature. Never felt threatened. Rattlesnakes, fires, this, that, nothing. It was cool. My uncle, who got captured...
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
and to see it in a way that gives them a much more expansive, inclusive, and to me, a more compassionate way of understanding how we got here, where we are, and where to go forward from that point, but not in the sense that, you know, like, I know you don't. I'm not interested in that.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
in World War II by the Japanese and then escaped into the Philippines jungles for three years, I think. And then he fed himself on snakes. Wow. And so when I was growing up, he was a herpetologist. He studied snakes. That's what he, he had already studied them for three years in a way.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so he would teach me how to handle snakes, and this is a boa, and this is a rattlesnake, and this is how you hold it, and don't grab it there, grab it here, and so forth. So there was that immersion into something we often feel threatened by, you know, a snake, right away we get, you know, alert, at least.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
But I feel like that whole experience of being safe outside carried into the rest of my life. As opposed to seeing it as other or as a threat or I can't survive here. I can. I knew I could. So that's influenced me a lot. And then actually working in... I started a natural food company and what... interested me was because I started because the food was crap then. I'm sorry.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
It was just like it is now, but in many cases, but it, I wanted to have organic food. And that was the term we use. And then, and I spent several years trying, contracting, meeting with, and learning from farmers all over the country who had been processing organic agriculture sometimes for decades and decades. They didn't change because there was demand.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
They did it because there was land and they wanted to treat the land properly and leave it to their sons and daughters in the way they found it or better. And these people were like teachers. They were like gurus.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
They were like, because they knew their land and such a, and so that was a teaching for me, you know, that connection between people and the land, you know, and that what you can learn by being on the same land roughly, you know, instead of, you know, getting an airplane, flying to some place and fly back. And you don't learn much that way. You can have a good time, but you don't learn.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
You learn by staying in place. And so those had a big impact on me. And I think the last thing, which is just seeing the climate movement itself be extraordinarily dualistic and ineffective. And I'm not talking about individuals who do things, you know, and try to make a difference. I'm not talking about that.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I'm just talking about the movement itself, the rhetoric that came out of the Conference of the Parties and corporations and, you know, all that sort of stuff. And finally, you know, I did what I could on that, but that's why Carbon, the Book of Life came out to say, can we just change this conversation? Because I don't think it's working. It's not bringing us together.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
why is it so important for us to change this story and this relationship that we have with this molecule that's the foundation to life because it is the foundation for life exactly right and we see carbon as an element and we were taught that in high school science of course and we can measure and look at it that way but what we've done
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I couldn't agree more. Yeah. It's interesting to see their early reviews and readers and their response. A lot of them use the word poetic a lot, which I've never... I've written poems, but I've never published them. This is not a poem. But I think what I mean by poetic is that it gets to how they feel. It evokes a feeling in them when they read certain sentences or certain paragraphs.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And that's what's missing from, again, the climate dictums, the climate certainty. I think, you know, my observation is that people strive to get a megaphone and once they get it, they don't want to give it up. They have a podium, they have a platform, you know, they've platformed themselves almost.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And people listening, you know, I mean, obviously they must be good at something, you know, like AOC and Bernie Sanders, you know, going around, you know. And it's a fun experience for the people attending. And if you've got the microphone, you know, you can... Yeah, it's fun to say that this is all the fault of corporations and billionaires.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Well, the secrets are in the 3.4 trillion creatures that we share this planet with. And then in the uncountable number of plants that we also share this planet with. And I often say to people, not in an arrogant way, I hope, that we don't know where we live. We don't know where we live. We literally don't know the earth. And, but furthermore, we don't know who we live with.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Well, sure. I mean, I do think the existing, you know, capitalist exploitive extractive system will collapse, you know, economically. I don't have a question about that because it's based on debt. Debt in every sense of the word, both capital debt, I mean... you know, and it can't sustain itself. That's for sure. That is not about human beings. That's about a system.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And obviously people who think they can benefit from the system want to be part of the system. They want to be in the Trump administration. They want to be in Washington. They want to be in banks. They want to be in whatever, that's happening. But the bulk of humanity is different than that. The bulk of humanity are really quite lovely. I'm not saying those people are nice.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I'm just saying humanity is really a lovely species. And as opposed to virus or some disease that happened to be crawling across the planet. Do we make mistakes or do we know the right thing to do? No. Have we caused a lot of damage? Yes. Do we cause suffering? Yes. There's been wars forever for 6,000 years or more. But I do feel that we're...
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
we're at the cusp of something that's coming to life, a borning that is really beautiful. That's what I see. I can see all the things that Bernie Sanders and others are saying about others. You know, I can see the polarity and I don't necessarily disagree, but it doesn't move the needle, you know?
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I mean, Bernie Sanders was, you know, when he ran for president, I've known him for a while, he's a great guy, but, I mean, he was going on his private from city to city to city, giving four or five speeches a day and decrying fossil fuels. Well, he was... Jet A Fuel was taking him from city to city to city to city.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
If you don't realize that people who are on the oil rigs and people who work for oil companies are really good people, then we're in real trouble. They are good people. They're moms, they're dads, they have children, they have grandchildren. You know, they give the part of a church, they take care of people who are unwell or less well in their community.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
These are good human beings, you know, but we're so focused on this projection. And one thing I want to say about the climate narrative too, that gets to this. is that we have this idea that we're in an energy transition. If people just figure it out, you know, somehow, you know, and switch to renewables, right?
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Solar, wind, that, you know, we would have the net zero in 2050 and everything would be solved. And, you know, like, and Drew, that's just so extraordinary. Ordinarily mistaken. We are not in an energy transition. 80% of the energy in the world is coal, gas, oil. 20% is electricity. We can make that renewable, probably. And by 2050, maybe, maybe not. Let's say we do. But you can't make steel.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
You can't make cement. You can't make plastic, even if you don't want to. You can't make aluminum. You can't make roads. You can't make sidewalks. You can't make with electricity. So can we stop talking about this energy transition? We are not in an energy transition. Can we have an adult conversation about where we actually are? Hugely dependent on fossil fuels, hugely dependent on them.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Our understanding of invertebrates and vertebrates and creatures and birds, et cetera, is just now sort of opening up to the idea that plants, insects have consciousness, have language, have emotion, these qualities that we have never associated with the living world. And we're on the cusp of a huge breakthrough in science and understanding, you know, not just that whales speak, they do.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
we can't do with nuclear either say oh we'll do nuclear they can't make cement that can't make steel that can't make aluminum that can't make glass that can't i mean come on i'm under educated on that why couldn't nuclear be a part of that i'm under educated you can't because you can't make cement with electricity you can't make steel with electricity you can't make that's you're saying it needs fossil fuels it needs fossil fuels if you're going to make cement
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And if you're going to make steel, and if you're going to make cars, and if you're going to make roads, if you're going to make buildings. I mean, and so we're not even having a conversation that's actually logical. Because they came up with Jimmy Carter as president, that we're going to energy transition and nuclear energy.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Somehow we just have nukes and we have basically renewables and we're good to go. It's just, again, I'm just saying, can we just have an adult conversation? That's absolutely not true. We use more wood in the first 25 years of this century than the last century if we... per 25 years. In other words, we use more wood per capita from here to 2025.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
More wood in the 20th century than the 19th century. More wood in the 19th century than in the 18th century. We've used more fossil fuels in the same way. More in the last 25 years per century than in the last 100 years. We've used more coal in the last 25 years than we have if you prorated it over the last century, the 20th century. The 20th century used more than the 19th century.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
19th century used more. 2.3 billion people depend on wood every day for food, or food as cooking, and heat. 2.3 billion. more than all the nuclear power in the world by a factor of four. That's the world we live in. And again, I'm not I am definitely not into solutionism here saying, by the way, I got this idea, you know, read my book. You know, that's not what I'm saying at all.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I'm trying to say, can we look at the whole of the situation we're in with respect? Because that's what you're talking about. You talk about the people who don't know or cannot possibly entertain doing anything other than what they're doing to stay alive and survive and take care of themselves and their children, that's respect.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so we have to enter this whole conversation with profound respect for each other.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
and and and acceptance and listen to things that we may disagree with but listen with openness receptivity and compassion as opposed to being right i mean being right is a sure way to to make to be wrong in my opinion and i hope nothing in the book comes across that way you know um i do take a couple digs at technologies where i'm going are you kidding this have you did you do physics in ninth grade
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Because this won't work. You know, so it's not like going after the people or the promoters of the technology. It's just saying it won't work. Well, let's talk about that a little bit.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Technology is really the word weaving. It's weaving together knowledge, okay? And technology has always been with us, even when we didn't call it technology. I mean, making a carpet is technology. Making clothing is a technology, really important technology. So we can't be pro-tech or anti-tech. I mean, it's sort of silly. We are geniuses, human beings, at technology.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
However, having said that, you can promote technologies that may make sense from a financial point of view that don't make any sense in terms of science. And one of those is carbon capture. There's a direct DAC, you know, And the idea is that you can suck the air, you can, down, and there's four parts of CO2, right, per 10,000 parts.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And we understand that. And we have obviously primate behavior studied by Jane Goodall and others in terms of their communication. But we're talking now about bees having emotion. And this is science, this is not projection. And that's what I mean about that's our family, that's our kin, not biologically in the sense of genetics. but without whom there is no life on earth.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And you separate that out, and then you've got the CO2, and now you have to separate the C from the oxygen, you know, get the carbon. And then you liquefy it and then you pump it somewhere where there's a geological formation and you put it there and you captured it and somehow this is the solution. What's wrong with that picture?
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
picture is that the reason co2 is in the air is called entropy we all studied it second law of thermodynamics energy only goes one direction if i burn something you get ash right you don't can't make a log out of ash you make ash out of a log co2 is entropy from burning coal gas and oil and wood Right. So what are we going to do?
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
We're going to set up these enormous machines, by the way, they're really huge, you know, that are basically sucking, separating, you know, liquefying and pumping. Well, that takes energy. Well, where's the energy gonna come from? Well, they're saying it should, renewables will come from renewables, solar and wind, okay? Solar and wind also have a footprint.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
It's not like they're free, it's not free energy. They have a big footprint to make a solar panel. They don't last 20, 25 years. You know, wind turbines, they have the wind turbine problem, the blades, no one knows what to do with the old blades, okay? It takes a lot of energy to make a wind turbine, all right? So that creates entropy. If you use energy, there's entropy.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
That's, again, second law, inviolable. So what we're saying is we're going to use entropy to cure entropy. It's like, uh-uh, not possible. It's simply not possible. You know, and so to me, that'd be like saying, like, you're a rancher and you have a lot of cattle and, you know, and looking at all these cow patties on your pasture and going, you know, let's make a cow out of that cow patty.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Because the cow patty is entropy, right? It goes one way. We took the energy out, cow did, we did, we eat, boom, and we poop. Okay. So that's where direct air capture is to me sort of like I'm a gog. I'm absolutely a gog as a layperson that gets a hall pass as a technology that's going to make a difference. And I say some of the other ones too, just like, no, they won't work.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
We do know what will work, but that isn't one of them.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Share it with our audience in contrast. Yeah, the purpose of regenerative agriculture is not to sequester carbon. That's the outcome. For example, you know, I mean, there's many analogies in health. You know, the purpose isn't this. That's the outcome, right? Health is the outcome. But, you know, the purpose is not to buy a lot of bottles of pills.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so RegenAg basically is taking, I consider soil an organism, not as a medium. And we, it's full of different living things, of course, you know, live soil, that is healthy soil. So are we. You know, we consider ourselves an organism, but soil is an organism in my opinion. But whether you like that term or not, it doesn't matter. Healthy soil is full of life.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
you know, microbial life, bacterial life, and there's nematodes and worms and beetles and all sorts of things crawling inside, making it home. 90% of all insects actually come back to the soil at some point, you know, daily or weekly and so forth, or the plants on the soil. But the... We talk about regenerative. The soil is the source of all life. And I don't mean to exaggerate.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Find me a source of life besides the oceans, by the way, but on land. Find me another source. There is no other source. It comes from plants. All animals, insects, everything, eat plants, right? And some, or they suck, you know, the honey or the nectar or this, or they nibble at it and so forth. It all comes to that.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so to give a sort of expansive sense of the words you read, the complexity, the majesty of this place, it just changes, perhaps, your sense of respect. And then maybe it changes your sense of what you are doing or not doing as a denizen of this planet. You're here, you come, you live and you go. So what are you going to do while you're here?
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
So all 5,000 cultures that have existed here that we can identify have always called the earth Mother Earth. They knew. What's a mother? Source of life. Men can't have babies. Women can. The earth has babies. It's called life, right? And so that's where we get away. We eat the animal. The animal ate the plant. So we can plant the plant, eat the plant. We can eat the animal.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Either way, it's coming from the soil. So regenerative agriculture is just a flip of what we've done for the last 100 years. What we're doing is feeding the plant. NPK, you know, artificial chemical fertilizers. And not only that,
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
the the end part the nitrogen for sure is now enwrapped or covered with pfas for time release because it breaks down over time well so now the pfas are in our soil and they're systemic and they're going up into the plants and we're eating pfas they're put there so when you top dress the soil with mpk the plants are happy in a certain way They have what they need to get green and get big.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
But the problem is that they're weak and don't have all the micronutrients. They don't have the minerals that you absolutely need for viability and for true health. And so insects come in and say, oh, delicious, like a thousand acres, same thing. Wow, let's go breed and eat. And at the same time,
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
What happens as the soil weakens from chemical fertilizer, lack of roots going down, the roots don't go down now, they go out, go laterally. They get everything they need from the surface. Then the soil is degraded. And as the soil degrades, weeds come up. And it's so interesting about weeds because we think weeds as, quote, quote, weeds, right? Wrong plant, wrong place.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
But in fact, if you actually know weeds or these plants, because your plants are not weeds, and you look at the land, you can tell from the weed what's wrong with the soil. They are there to heal the soil. It's nature's way to heal. Like the Canadian Thessalonians will have deep tap roots go down. Why? They're bringing up minerals up to the subsurface into the labral parts of the soil, right?
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
So regeneration or regenerative agriculture is simply doing what soil does everywhere it always has in terms of making itself richer, renewing, you know, being part of a cycle of life. And so in a forest or in a meadow or a grassland, you know, It's eaten by animals, and the poop goes down, or the plant then withers and dies in the winter, and it goes back into the soil. There's a cycle.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so regenerative agriculture, you have more life in the soil, you have more carbon. So people talk about, like, okay, it suppresses carbon. Yes, it does, and we should do that. But that's not why we should do it. That's the outcome.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I can say this emphatically. The only way forward for humankind is to create more life on Earth. There is no other way. I don't care what Bill Gates says or what some oil company says or this or that and so forth. There is no other way. Does part of that include also human life?
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Like, do we look at the growth of a tree and say that's bad? No, but let's parse this a little bit. Growth of what? Growth of what? Of course, there's all the nuances. So you don't want to just praise the verb or the noun, growth.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Are you going to increase life on Earth or are you going to decrease it? Are you going to destroy what has taken a billion years to create? And we've lost 70% of our mammalian population in the last 50 years. That's a pretty rapid decrease.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Yeah. I agree. I agree. Going after people is not really a winning combination of, you know, a winning argument because they already feel like a victim. Most people on earth, frankly, today feel like a victim. They are coping.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And we may be not realizing that in our privileged existence here in California or parts of California, but really go out there, talk, interview, see people are very threatened by the world as it is today. And they're coping and doing the best they can. And again, that's why this isn't an anti-human thing. It's a pro-human thing.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
It's like these people, these mothers, these children, these fathers, are good people they need to be have the capacity to take care of themselves not to be taken care of that's patronizing but and and so that when we're talking about creating more life the tools the things the materials for their home and so forth there's a company called Invent wood. And it's in Maryland.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And I think I wrote about it a little bit in the book. But, you know, Chinese inventor. And basically it can take bamboo, but obviously any form of wood, and make a substance that is lighter than steel, one-sixth the weight, you know, and 50% stronger, one-half the cost, and replace all steel. And so that's like, whoa, no steel. Because steel you can't make without coal.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
So you eliminate coal right there. And you treat the forest very, very differently. You don't need much wood or bamboo to make it. And that's 8% to 9% of carbon emissions are from steel manufacturing. So that's just, there are techniques and technologies being invented now, which are just extraordinary by really amazing human beings. We don't hear about them so much.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And maybe in my next book, I think I will talk about them. To give people a sense of the genius of humanity as opposed to its venality.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Or are you going to do, are you going to act in such a way, live your life in such a way that absolutely creates more life, not only for your children and your children's children, but for all people who follow us?
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Yeah, I just, I wish they hadn't used the title because they don't create abundance. They just shift. the rate of exploitation of the environment. There is no abundance in their thesis. What they're talking about is the polarity between the Republicans and the Democrats. Republicans get shit done and Democrats are going, wait a minute, but what about this? And what about this? And what about this?
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And all these laws and strictures and so forth, you know? And they're looking at both parties and saying, you know, California, you know, you had light rail planned forever. You've got $20 billion invested so far, and it looks like it'll never be built.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Yeah, we see the results of this. I just had to repair a pathway at my house where I live, okay? And it was made of actually wood that I, manzanita that I found there where I am. Like a reclaimed type of wood? It's manzanita, manzanita. And yes, and everything else is reclaimed wood and so forth.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And actually the fact is that by and large, indigenous people, that is to say the tribal cultures, and maybe tribal is not the right adjective, have been doing that for tens of thousands of years. And you could say, well, they didn't have a choice. Fair enough. They didn't have technology. They didn't have ways not to. But they stayed in the place and they learned to live there.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And we were fixing it and a building inspector went by and said, red tagged it and said, I said, we're just repairing it. It's been there for 16 years. And red tagged it. Okay, $95,000 later,
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
over 14 months later and i was a contractor in my miss menu so i know how to build things you know oh you have to go look at the cement blocks and you have to just get x-rays to show that there's steel and then sufficient amount of rebar and i mean it was so bizarre it wasn't just building inspectors taking care of safety and of course you know i mean make sure everything's cool
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so, I mean, that would make anybody a Republican right there, that experience. I live in a very liberal town. And so I get what Ezra and what's his name? I forgot his name. Dave. Dave, yeah. Yeah, are talking about. I get that. But it doesn't create abundance. It creates more abundance. But not abundance because it's still based on an extractive economy. You know, where is the cement?
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Where is the wood? Where is the asphalt? Where is all this stuff going to come from? From, you know, low-income housing and so forth. I have a friend, Jonathan Rose, the Rose Companies, and he builds the best low-income, I mean, super low-income, subsidized, people can't even afford to live there, green housing in the world, in the United States. And they're full. You can't get in.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
What city is this in? Oh, Denver, LA, San Francisco, I mean, all over. And so there's somebody who really cares about people, about architecture, about design. He builds common places, but places for people to get together. So they're not in cell blocks, like, you know, which you see in sort of low-income housing is like,
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
and you get drug gangs and you get people don't know each other and all this other stuff. He's really thought it through. We know how to do this, but he just doesn't matter whether it's Republican or Democrat. He just does it in those cities because they need it.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
But I'm just saying it's like we really need to have the conversation about abundance because the book I'm writing right now, when I saw that, I said to my wife, gosh, I would have used that title for my book. Yeah. if they hadn't used it. So kudos to them. Yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Yeah, I mean, what abundance are they talking about? Because they're not talking about the living world. They're not talking about nature. They're not talking about water. They're not talking about forests. They're not talking about creatures. They're not talking about roads. They're not talking, et cetera.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And it taught them how to be, in a sense, the... that's just the caretakers you know but the progenitors of life in that place that is to create more life and so if you look backwards and you look at the the record that we have that we're putting together anthropologically and biologically of people who lived before the settlers before the colonists before
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Well, they are, and we should go upstream. That may be the name of my next book, actually, is Upstream. And because we're dealing with it downstream, and we're dealing with everything you named, and we're trying to deal with it pharmaceutically or other means, which is the biggest industry in America is basically pharmacy.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so you're dealing with the NIH, you're dealing with the USDA, you're dealing with the FDA, you're dealing with the agencies that have been bought and captured a long time ago by big ag, by big pharma. And so we have a system that is basically corporate. It's a corporate government in those areas, in those particular areas.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And instead of having, whether it's agency or whatever it is, but a polity that says, can we just go out to cause? You know, there's a parable of the river. It's been around for a thousand years and it shows up in different ways, but it's about people being by a river and they're eating or whatever they're doing. And then they see somebody going down the river, you know, who's like,
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Can't swim, obviously, but being carried away by the flow of the river. And they go, jump in, you know, pull the person out. They go, whew, wow, you know. Then there's another one. You go, I can do it again. Then there's another one. And somebody says, I think we should go up a river and find out who's throwing them in. Because we'll never fix it here. Who's throwing them in? Yeah, yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And the point is, so we aren't going upstream in this culture. We're going downstream. Go watch CNN. You see ads for diseases I've never heard of, and I'm fairly literate. I've never heard of these 13,000 diseases. But I mean, and medicines. Well, that must mean there's a lot of people watching CNN that must have that disease or they wouldn't advertise on CNN. They're not doing it for...
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
vanity reasons and so forth so i mean we're not going to cause you know we're going to cure but cure actually is symptomatic you know it's not cure it's not creating health this whole your whole problem is about health it's not about you know and and and understanding you know the the But the extraordinary, again, we can talk about complexity, the complexity of the human body.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I mean, it's just this wondrous mystery. And we have a system of governance. So if people voted for Trump because they thought Bobby Kennedy, who I've known for a long time, was going to save the day, he's not going to save the day because the Senate is controlled by ag and pharmacy.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And it's never going to get through Congress in any shape, manner, or form because it is anti everything that Bobby Kennedy stands for and has spoken to. It doesn't matter whether Trump likes him or not. And so... But either way...
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
regardless of who you voted for why or this or who spoke to people's needs and who didn't the fact is that unless we're going upstream to cause and the cause is what is in our food you know the poor quality of our food how we engineer our food how we advertise yeah i mean it's just abhorrent
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
They were, in a sense, discovered and then rapidly, in many cases, not terminated, but exploited. You find people who have extraordinary way of seeing the planet. They could hear plants. We thought, oh, yeah, right. We are mocking them. They actually can hear plants. They can communicate in such a way. They see a world differently.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And to me, and I say that to me, Pepsi, Coke, Mars, these companies are committing a crime against humanity by spending $5 billion a year teaching 11-year-olds to drink Mountain Dew, the highest amount of sugar and caffeine you can take from anything you buy in the store. and with pop stars thrown in just to make sure that it's attractive. So that's where we live. That's the culture we're in.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
We've created this culture. So unless we're really talking so that people can, mothers and fathers and doctors who care about this, we can come together on this, but we can't come together by treating it downstream.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
misguided well we're being misguided by the president of the united states every single day and with intention the question is can somebody within that you know uh make a difference i don't know that they can uh we'll see um make a difference in key areas you know which are around health and welfare health and not welfare but you know the welfare of human beings in terms of their health
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I don't know. I mean, to work for somebody who is incapable of telling the truth, incapable of it, just lies purposefully every single day and says things that are so bizarrely incorrect. And basically his teacher is Roy Cohn. If everybody wants to know how Trump acts and what he does, read about Roy Cohn and you'll understand. He has a method to his madness and so forth.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
is basically objectify it and make it a thing, when in fact there's 1.2 trillion molecules in every cell of our body. And so we're looking at it with the same mindset that caused the problem of global warming, which is to objectify the living world.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so did Hitler, so did Viktor Orban, so did a lot of people. And Steve Bannon talks about flood the zone, flood the zone, flood the zone. You just, every day, it's just all this stuff's coming at you, coming at you, coming at you and so forth. You know, whether Bobby chose, made a right choice or not, I don't know.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
You know, I don't believe that corporate America as it's constituted is going to let too many changes being made in our food or our medicine. I don't think they'll let, it's the profits, you know, and they have big influence for the contributors to Trump. They're not contributors to Bobby Kennedy. We'll see. You ask fair questions. You ask very fair questions.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Well, they've been there for thousands of years, had lots of time to learn how to do that. We've been here, I say the settler colonists have been here a relatively short time. Now, I don't mean to exempt China, India, and cultures to go back four or 5,000 years. Those are different than the settler colonist cultures that I'm referring to who came in from Europe to the Americas.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I have lots of candidates. Pesticide would be one, which he doesn't have any control over whatsoever. And what would you like to see happen there? Oh, I mean, we approve pesticides here that other countries don't. I mean, we approve herbicide made by Syngenta, all right? And Syngenta was an English company And now it's owned by the Chinese. Okay.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And the herbicide is banned in the UK and banned in China. But they fight to sell it here, Syngenta. What name does it go under?
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
We'll figure it out. I'm embarrassed.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
It's a big competitor, you know. Yeah, it's a huge company. And I'm just saying, if you look at what the EPA authorizes, other countries are going, can't understand why we authorized it. Look at the science, you know. And... So that is, again, go to cause. Can we go to cause, please? I mean, the second highest level and almost the first level of cancer in the United States is where?
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Well, I know because I follow your work. Iowa, right? Wow. Yeah. Tell the audience why. Pesticides and glyphosate, probably glyphosate, you know, who knows? But I mean, the rich black soil, you know, that Iowa has and had, you know, I mean, no wonder people want to farm there. It's extraordinary soil originally.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
But because it's corn soy, basically, it's just drenched in pesticides and herbicides. Every farmer knows it. Every family knows it. They're seeing cancers there in like third, fourth generation farmers, you know, their great-grandchildren. that have never been seen before in the Midwest. Like, where did it... It is like such unusual forms of cancer.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
You know, in children, tiny children, so forth, you know. And so... I say that only about pesticides because if you could just get to EPA, because it's corrupt. The EPA process is totally corrupt when it comes to chemicals. And that's what Kennedy's against and tries to stop.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
But I think what I'm trying to get at is like, There's so much wisdom around this. There's so much knowledge. The future is not in intelligence. The future is in knowledge. And we're all kind of an AI. It doesn't matter whether it's artificial intelligence or not. The future is in knowledge, and knowledge is gained in a completely different way than intelligence.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
But I think it's a lot faster and a lot more decisive if we ban the chemicals used in agriculture that are banned in Europe and even China. I mean, we are the outlier in the world in terms of allowing chemicals that are extremely toxic to be used.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
The greatest toxic source, I believe, is agriculture. I could be wrong, but I think it is. We have 500 dead zones in the oceans today. It all comes from agricultural runoff. Okay. And nobody sees that and they don't think about it. You know, they eat their whatever, you know, from the farmer. That's number one. Number two is we have lost our pollinator population about 70%.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
We're at 70. So if we get to 3. Yeah, get to 3. We're at 70% loss. 70% loss. Loss, yeah. Mm-hmm. So I would go after there's pesticides being used on top, you know, obviously on the soil, and pesticides being used to coat the seeds that are systemic, you know. And they go up the plant and they go into leaves and blossoms and insects eat it and die.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And they're just to protect the seeds from predation in the soil, but they go everywhere in the environment. And so, but they're in applesauce for babies. And so again, I think if we look at holistically early, like the whole picture, You cannot lose all the invertebrate population in the world that pollinates our plants. It's not about just losing pollinated plants.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
We would lose that, of course. We can eat things that are non-pollinated. I'm talking about E.O. Wilson, probably the most profound and recognized entomologist in the history of the world, from Harvard, saying, you get to 3-4%, it flips. There's no more life. There's no more fish anymore. Oceans die, too. And I think that's in my book. Maybe not.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
But the point being is that I would go to these points of intervention, I would call them. They would make a huge, huge difference.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
It's harder in health because there's so many diseases, so many different maladies, so many different treatment modalities, you know, and some of which make sense, some of which I don't really think make sense, some of which are, you know, toxic in their own right, some of which have done double-blind studies.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And if you know, if you just are slightly better than the double-blind with the chemical, then it gets passed, you know, I mean... It's stuff like that, you know, where you're going, this drug has been authorized, it's passed, you can buy it, you can sell it, you can prescribe it. You know, this just, it's just corrupt.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
It is. I agree. You did a better job than I did just there. I think that I'm very... I am sure, as I said earlier, that we're in a stage of collapse in many areas. I'm also very sure that humanity is rising in beautiful ways everywhere in the world. And life only exists in community, only. Your cell is a community, for example. It doesn't exist outside of community.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And what's happening is people are forming, gathering, coalescing into communities, small communities, which we may see as marginal and not important, but it's important to them.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Changing the land, changing schooling, changing relationship, changing how they build their buildings, changing how they interact with each other, you know, reducing their footprint, which is not their overall purpose, but it's the overall outcome. of being a community, being a community that celebrates, that has music, that shares, you know, that cares. And that's happening all over.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And find one near you. They exist or make your own. So that is the only way to me to be able to take in the news, you know, and to read that. If you read that every morning, it's kind of a toxicity itself. And to counter that, you really want to really focus on the extraordinary qualities of human beings, and go for that, go to that, be that, support it, and that exists as well.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so the thing about you talking about awe is that we are awesome. People are awesome. And I talked about the inventor, but I know him now. And he's like a Thomas Edison. He's got all these inventions. And he's so, not childlike, he's smart as a whip, but he is childlike in a way. There's a kind of innocence and joy that he has, you know? He is here. He exists.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And I've just been very fortunate to meet him. But to me, he's like an example of what's out there everywhere, from Uganda to the Sami people up in Norway to everywhere on earth right now, in Japan. I hear about and connected to or read about, informed about the things that are coming up. You know, it's kind of like after a fire. Had a big fire here in LA, okay. But watch what happens, you know.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
The grass comes up, it's super green. Why? It's been fertilized by the ashes, right? So it's greener than normal. You get wildflower blooms that you've never seen before. You know, maybe not this year because of the dryness, but you will. And so forth. In other words, we are both the fire and the new growth at the same time, as opposed to being one, you know? And so that's my guide.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
That's how I'm guided, I guess I would say, is by people just like yourself.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Yeah, right. Where did the name come from? It came from a book by Samuel Butler. And it was a 19th century send-up of 19th century England. And so it was a spoof, actually. And the... The main character in the book is shipwrecked and lands and he's climbing over a mountain range. He comes down, there's a whole city and people and so forth.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I mean, it's really New Zealand, but it doesn't ever use a name. And he goes there and he's just so amazed by what he's seeing. And then he's arrested because he has a watch on, or maybe, I don't know whether it's a fob, but he's got a watch. And he's thrown in jail. He said, well, what did I do? He said... We banned machinery. We banned it here. Machinery enslaved people. And that's beginning.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And then people go to the colleges of unreason, and they go to the colleges of unreason to learn ways of talking that only people in the colleges of unreason can understand. If you didn't go to the college of unreason, then it's just garble. You can't communicate to anybody else, and so forth. And on and on again, it's a send up of England.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Because I thought at that time, the world was upside down and backwards, especially the food industry, because I'd had my own experience of having asthma for six months to 18 years old. And then changing my diet and boom, in nine days, I could breathe again for the first time in my life without aminophil and ephedrine, without a drug. The first time I could feel air at the bottom of my lungs.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And I thought, WTF, I went to doctors all this time. And I went back to them because I had three doctors prescribing the drugs I needed because I was ODing on them. I could only, I had to get three different doses just to breathe. And I went back to them and told them about it, you know, and I went on a basically food fast, simple. And they just dismissed it. They all dismissed it.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Oh, psychosomatic, this, that, just a chance, you're lucky, maybe it's your age. And then I started to expand my diet, you know, because of vegetables particularly, but grain, seeds, vegetables, you know, non-seed oils, et cetera, et cetera, you know, the things that are all obvious today. And I had to go to different store, different store, Chinatown, Japantown, the Quaker store here.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I think on the West, we have to look to the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution that came out of Europe. And it was extraordinary, is extraordinary to this day, But it depended upon naming and making distinctions as opposed to seeing inseparability, because that was already present for people.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I had to go to the farmer's market. And I thought, it should be a store, you know? But so when I was in Boston, there was a kind of a buyer's co-op where on Newberry Street and it was under the macrobiotics and brought in food. And then one day you just split it up. So it wasn't really a store. It was like a co-op, you know, you just came in and had bags there and scoops and, you know,
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so I was asked to, it became a store, sort of without a license. And I was asked to take care of it, and I did, because I could read. Nobody came in. And I loved reading. And one day somebody came into the store and said, how do you know this food is organic? And it was oats, actually. And it says, because I get it from the Mennonites in Pennsylvania. Like, come on.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
somebody else that same week said, how do you know your oil, your seed oils, are cold pressed? I said, it says right there, you can read it, cold press. And they both, you know, I thought, I didn't know. I felt like, I didn't know they were organic, the oats. I didn't know the oil was cold-pressed. I just believed it.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
So I wrote to Hayne, who's Hayne, by the way, and said, you know, tell me about your cold-pressed oils. And they said, well, there's no such thing as cold-pressed. It means cold-processed, which means, you know, we chill the oils, take out the stearate so they're clear and not cloudy. And I was furious. And then that same week,
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
The oats came from Pennsylvania and they came off the back of a bobtail and with no lift. And so these hundred pound bags of oats, and you could see in these Bemis bags, this label sewn into it, you know, National Oat Company, Iowa, Des Moines, Iowa.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And I was taking these bags down and I immediately got on the phone, you know, you had to get information, Des Moines, Iowa, National Oat Company, there was no, and a really bright, nice woman answered, hi, can I help you? I said, yeah, tell me about your organic farming program. And she said, huh? Tell me, what? I said, tell me about your organic farming program.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And she said, honey, would you tell me what that means? You know, and I explained, she said, oh gosh, gee, I don't know. You know, we just buy oats and roll them. That's all we do here. And then Hayne wrote me back a letter with it. And if that hadn't happened,
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
i would have just gone done something else i don't know what i would have done and i said oh man i'm going to replace every single thing in my store there wasn't that many skus by the way maybe 50 skus but and with organic and i'm going to walk the farm meet the farmer see them make sure because i you know i had a grandfather's farm i grew up there and that it's organic
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so that DNA is still in the Erewhon today. Now, the difference is that we were very affordable. We had 500,000 students in Boston who couldn't afford to eat anyway, in some ways, but certainly not, you know, high-priced foods. So it was very reasonably priced, you know, and people could afford to eat out of Erewhon. And it grew and grew and grew, you know.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
They didn't understand it necessarily in Europe, but they... So, I mean, Descartes and so many of the discoveries that emerged from Western science in Europe, basically it was about separation. It was about making distinctions. You name something, if it's a that, then it can't be a this. So you have to make distinctions. And we continue to do that to this day. But that atomizes the world.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
for sure, Erewhon. In terms of price, I mean, a lot of things that are high price there, you don't really need. If you're buying grains and vegetables and good oil, you're fine. You can shop at Erewhon, no problem. There are things they sell there that are very expensive too. Sure. But they're doing it. And so, yeah. I don't take credit for it. I take credit for starting it, for sure.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I was the delivery boy and the manager and the owner. But yeah, so I've seen it matriculate, you know, and become this phenomenon.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I can agree more. At the same time, I think we have to be cautious that, you know, we are so privileged. And so we're in a little bit of an echo chamber in terms of what should, shouldn't be, you know, what works, what doesn't work. I'm not arguing against them so much as I'm saying is that we want to be sure that at least in awareness, we are aware of
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
of the entirety of human being and what they're experiencing on a daily basis in terms of nutrition, in terms of food, in terms of clothing, in terms of warmth, in terms of healthcare, in terms of knowledge and so forth. And that's harder to get. I live in a very privileged community as well. So I'm not, you know, of north.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
It makes it into pieces and parts. And then you think, well, what am I going to do with that? How am I going to exploit that? Can I do this? Can I do this? Whatever, and so forth. That was the birth of the type of medicine that's being practiced to this day in the West. And it has some good sides, it has some very destructive sides, you know.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so it's important if we're going to look at it holistically, we've got to look at the whole. And we're not the whole here. But we're fine. I mean, we exist here, you know, and nothing wrong with that. But we have to make sure that the, what I say is just like,
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
We have to, we have to, another way I say it is like, it's almost like we've gone down this road, whether on foot or whatever, but of degeneration and on every level, our seas, our water, our health, I mean, levels of disease. I mean, air quality. I mean, the ubiquity of chemicals, pesticides. And you go right down the line. We've gone down this road to degeneration.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
We can see the end of that road now. That's what we're talking about, both of us. And it's like there's a fence there. Whatever we're driving doesn't go any further. So I think the stage we're at now is like, huh, okay, I get that. Now, do a 180. Look the other way. How do we make this regenerative? Not like, stop that, stop that, you're wrong, don't do that.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
You know, that's easy to criticize or to blame or to be righteous, right? It doesn't help. But to just look and say, it's the question. It's the question. Hmm, good question. It is a really good question. And I said earlier, and I mean it, the only way and the only path forward for humanity is regeneration. We've gone about as far as we can go this way in terms of degeneration.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
So that's the simple, you know, axis upon which I think, you know, lives that will make a difference should basically pivot on.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Sure, just change the tense. Humanity isn't making it now, it's not. And humanity can make it. Both are true as opposed to predictively. like they won't, they will, and that's predictive. I have no prophecies, no insight into the future.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
It's very different than Ayurvedic medicine, which goes back, you know, I don't know, 4,000 years, 5,000 years? I mean, on your program you're talking about C-15, right? And, well, C15 is in ghee, which has been used in India for thousands and thousands of years, even by vegetarians practically. Why? How do they know? They didn't know it by name or code.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I do have a sense of course, of direction, of flow, you know, and that flow, the one where they can't make it, we can't make it, so forth, is polluted and is, you can't tie its own shoelaces anymore, you know. I mean, it is failing, it is tripping up, it is causing disease, causing suffering, you know.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And there are some amazing people doing things that are joyous, that are creative, that are rooted in common sense and higher sense, both, you know, who their lives is dedicated to that. And it takes many, many, many forms. There's not one form. And so I look at both. You know, I...
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
When I read, I read a lot because I'm writing, and you've got to write to the Zeitgeist, you've got to write to the world that you live in. But when I open up the Times and the Post or the Guardian or FT, it's kind of like being punched in the nose. You know?
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
But then the rest of the time I'm reading stories or papers or books or listening to podcasts like yours and other people on the podcast, by the way, not just you. And I get excited. I get a Boolean. I get ideas come. I make notes or read this, go to show notes and say, oh my God, he talked about it or she talked about that. And it's your show notes.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And then, so I have a source that's different than the onslaught of what's coming at me in the morning. I do the onslaught because I have to know the zeitgeist. I have to know what other people are getting. Because if I'm not communicating to them, who am I talking to? And so I do that sort of bimodal, that sort of every day, you know. The zooming in and the zooming out. Yeah, yeah, you know.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And it's like, oh, my God, that's so crazy. That's so stupid. Oh, my God, this person is so amazing, so brilliant, you know, and so beautiful. It's both. And in terms of my...
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
I mean, my wife is younger than I am, and I often say, yeah, well, I'm one of those people, I'm leaving soon, and, you know, the whole people, the new arrivals are kind of wondering what the, you know, hell, what were you thinking, everybody, you know, because I got here, and this is a mess, you know, this is like our teenagers, and they're right, they have the right question, the right conclusion, by the way, and, but I said, when you're leaving, and she said, well, don't say that, don't say soon, and I said, well, whatever, I mean, but...
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
It's a different perspective if you spend decades and decades in your life trying to make a difference, caring and so forth, and then meeting great people. Thank you, by the way, for inviting me. And at the same time, seeing the rise of just utter stupidity and crassness and greed and hate and delusion, all those things the Buddhists talk about. and to balance both of that.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
and to objectify and make other the causes and to create an economy that's all about self and grasping and getting and taking and extraction and concentration and not about community, which is all life arises from community. and not out of respect, not out of compassion, not out of kindness, not out of a sense of connectedness, which is we're inseparably connected.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And so what are you going to do? You're here a short time, relatively now. You didn't know that when you were young. You never thought about terminus. You never thought about, you maybe thought about death, but it's very romantic. Not really, you know, and now I do. And I've been very, very, very, very fortunate.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
You know, I had one little thing stuck in my esophagus, which I had to go get taken out by a hospital. They just pushed the thing down. But I've never been in a hospital. I've never been hospitalized. I've never had a disease. I've never, you know, I go to those dentists or things. They fill out the medical form, you know, for... It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, here.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
They think I'm just being in a hurry. I said, oh, it's not, just none, none of the above. You're healthy from living a healthy life. And it's so simple. It's not like complicated, you know? I mean, and people say, well, what's your secret? There's no secret. I said, the problem, the secret is what I don't eat. I don't smoke. I don't drink. That's the secret.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
The foods I eat are fairly standard in fruits and vegetables, non-seed oils, things like that. I mean, just healthy. But that's it. Don't do anything. I don't take any pills. I don't take anything out of a bottle. I don't swallow anything. I don't, you know. And so it's not like you have to, you know, have a pharmacopoeia.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
But somehow they figured out how to create a diet and a food system that created healthy people, right? And so I think that... Where we are right now is this meeting. Maybe it's not a meeting in a traditional sense, but I mean, we're seeing this explosion of Western science as it continues to, but we're also seeing it meet indigenous wisdom. It's called traditional ecological knowledge.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
You open the cabinet door in the kitchen in the morning, like, okay, I'll take this. I took, oh, that's one a day. This is two a day. This is that. You can do it if you want, but I think that our health is actually innate. We're innately, the body always wants to move to that kind of level of well-being. Just stop messing with it.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Drew, I am very, very grateful for you, period, and for being in your company and being invited. Thank you so much.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
That is the ecological knowledge that the 5,000 cultures, you know, that non-Western cultures had and acted upon and act upon to this day. And what we're discovering is not how much more we know. I think what we're discovering is that we don't know. In other words, that it's more of a mystery, the living world, And so that produces a sense of humility, a sense of discovery, a sense of wow.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
What I said earlier about insects having emotions, that's such an anathema. If you said that even 10 or 12 years ago, you'd just be laughed at. You know, in college, you wrote a paper, you'd be good enough. You wouldn't pass, you know, and so forth. So the rate of discovery right now is really on, is the threshold of what we don't know, what we didn't know.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
So if they have emotions, well, but they don't have a cerebrum, so how, what's their cortex? They don't have a cortex. Well, how can they do this? And so there's a great deal of, what's it, revealing of what we don't know going on right now. And the fact that mother bats have a different lingo than the male bats, and they call it motherese. And they name their young.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And they teach them about the male bats on the other side of the cave. Watch out for that one. And if you take the ultrasonic sounds that they're making, which we can't hear, and you slow it down so you can hear it, it is the most beautiful sound you've ever heard, and you've never heard anything like it. That's what I mean about we're just at these thresholds. We're like, whoa.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
Where do we live and who are these 8.4 million species? And what we know is they're communicating every single moment, every day, everywhere on the world. They're talking to each other, just like our cells talk to each other. And what are they saying? What do they know? And we've long thought that if our intelligence could understand everything.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And now we understand that there actually may be very, very profoundly different types of intelligences on this planet. who see and understand it very differently. And it's not like we're the top dog. We are in terms of language, no question about it.
Dhru Purohit Show
We’re Not Separate from Nature, We’re Made of It: An Honest Conversation About Soil, Carbon, and the Future of Humanity with Paul Hawken
And with all due respect to Homo sapiens and the brain that developed from the use of language, the use of language that developed our brain, I mean, it's extraordinary. But beyond that, So there's a whole world here that we don't know. And we're just, I think, sort of like, you know, somebody coming to a threshold or a mountaintop and looking down and going, oh my gosh, look what I see before me.