Sequioa Hall Episode Transcript
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[00:00:00] this drives the people around me really crazy. and it's something I do a little bit differently and it comes from that debate example that I gave very early. I often will argue against myself in decisions, so it's, it's really hard to do, but, cuz you, it really hard is to keep your focus and not go into just spinning with possibilities and not doing anything, but you end up with a much more rich result when you do it that way.
Hey everyone, welcome to the Meaningful Revolution podcast. I'm your host, Shawn Butner. Today we have, my good friend Sequoia Hall. Born in California, raised in Guam, and has lived in San Jose for the last 30 years. Recently, he's retired from public office, [00:01:00] after, 17 years as a director on the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority, which is, I'm glad I nailed that on the first pass.
Um, , he now focuses on improving food quality for the world and playing an important role in creating programs that preserve and create food, growing land, proximity to the people who will eat from it. So he's concerned about how people can be healthier with lifestyle lateral changes. Sequoia, welcome to the podcast.
Awesome. I, I love the, the title, Sean. It's an awesome title. Super happy with the guests that you've been having. Super excited for you, you're bringing meaningful conversations. Really appreciate it. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that's the hope and the dream. So, so today we're gonna be talking about the intersection of sustainability and, and go.
Um, cause I, I kind of nerd out about it. I know we were talking a little bit before the podcast, a little bit of philosophy and stuff. [00:02:00] so I, I was curious, how did you get started in this like, sustainability government type space? and, and how do you like, something I've been thinking about very, like the last couple of years is like how to be a good citizen, that kind of stuff.
So, participating in government I think is one of the highest levels of service when it's done with that intention for service in mind. But I'd love to hear, so I know there's a ton of questions in there. I've been trying to pare it down, then I get excited. Yeah. How did you get involved? Let's start with how did you get involved in the space so we get maybe meander some of those other topics?
You know, I don't know what made me originally so interested in how people get along, but for me, what the, what the idea of government and politics is at its highest best place is the art of people navigating this world together and getting along and not getting in each other's way over too much so, and making space for each other.
Not even getting in the way, but being [00:03:00] proactively good. So, I from a young, I think I was like 12 or 13, and I asked for the birthday present of a year subscription to Newsweek Magazine. So I just was always like the kid that wanted to know about government and politics and, and a, in a macro world scale.
So it was less con I growing up on Guam, it's a little island. It's part of the United States, so constitution is in full effect there. but the, you know, the, the politics is really very, old school and especially we lived on a little island. To the North Tinian, where Theola gay took off and dropped the atomic bombs on Japan.
It was an interesting place, very heavy energy there sometimes. but the, there was the mayor, there was mean, you know, not a super nice guy. And it made me, I was in sixth grade, I think then, and it made me sort of realize that you could have these really bad actors in local government and what, and [00:04:00] how that could really tweak things.
And I, you know, so I always stayed involved and active and, I was invol, I was a disc jockey for a radio station in high school, so it was a, you know, I, the news newsroom was right next to me. And I, I did debate in high school, had a really excellent, debate coach team. Some really smart people who think very differently than I do.
They're very on a different political spectrum than I am, but they were incredible mentors. So about how to think so, and process, so in debate, The, the style that I did, you would be assigned the side of the topic. You knew the topic ahead of time, but you would literally flip a coin in before or against the statement in the topic.
Mm-hmm. So it, the intellectual rigor that that creates to examine your own ideas. I really loved, So fast forward in California 21, looking for a job, want a meaningful job, [00:05:00] you know, didn't like selling advertising for the Country Music network, which is a job I could not really my thing. you know, and so I just moved to California and I started working for a non-profit.
I found a job with a non-profit working to pass the big green initiative. and this is back in the right, in the 89 90 timeframe. So, and I've just stayed in, in, I loved it and I. I felt like getting involved at that level. and I met a bunch of connections and so I started to do a lot of political campaigns from there, with the intention of only working on policy stuff or people that I really believed in, which I have maintained.
So, and yeah, slowly we moved up here to Northern California and I, my path continued and I, went [00:06:00] from working on a local campaign to doing policy work on for the environmental side of, county supervisor's office. Jim Bell, he became state senator. He's a very important mentor toward me. To me, taught me a lot about how to think about decisions that you're making and how, how, who they benefit and what the role of government is in that benefit.
So creating the equality of benefit is a really interesting question as it comes to land use and, you know, whose land you let deep be developed or not. It's a. It's an interesting question and you gotta really be fair. So he was really instrumental and then served as a planning commissioner for the County of Santa Clara.
Uh, approved the, I've been through two cycles, I think, of, approval for the general use permit for Stanford University, which is a big project that, Santa Clara County planning deals with. as well as other issues from cement quarries to, you know, fence dis disputes, but [00:07:00] usually those don't rise to the planning commission
And then, then I was asked if I was interested in running for the Open Space Authority board seat. one of my friends was retiring and she asked me and I said, Yeah, that, that would, I think I could do that. And so I ran for that and. It was unopposed and, and easily won election. I've had people, and I served 16 years there, and I was super happy.
We went from an agency of seven people to, I think when I left the board, the agency had grown to about 50 full-time employees. Wow. so it, it had done a massive growth and I was super ready for somebody new to bring their perspective. I voluntarily stepped away, found a really awesome woman who's now in that seat.
She's amazing. She's doing new things that I wouldn't have been doing. So, part of I think being an elected official is knowing when, hey, my skill set now here is done. or I have, I have inputted my [00:08:00] print onto this. It's time for another member of the public to be able to, you know, have some input and make sure I'm not dominating with my, my side load thinking as much as I like to blow my silo up.
So right on. Right on. So that was a long answer, Yeah, no, no, totally. But I think it's one, I just wanna highlight how admirable it is that you've been involved in, in government and policy for such a long time. because I think, at least for my generation, you know, I was, you know, I born in early eighties and you know, a lot of times, especially like I grew up in the Midwest, so politics were for other people to do.
And like, you take a look around now and it's so there's the vitriol and you know, you don't see the service side of I'm making an impact in my local community, in [00:09:00] the state, you know, all the way up to the state and national level. So, thanks for that foundation and, For really being committed to that, cuz I know that that probably wasn't easy and probably hasn't gotten easier as time's gone by.
Um, so we don't need to go into, Well there's one little thing I'd like to mention here. Okay, Yeah. Yeah. I think this is really important about local, I'm talking just about local office right now. I think it's, we can all have a really amazing impact with our local office more than we think. And especially if we don't go there looking for power, we're just going there looking to represent what we think are good ideas.
So, a lot of people will go into local elected office for name id, real estate agents all the time, so, you know, Interesting. So it's a, it's a big name ID thing for them and they'll run. So it's a, it's a, I understand however , so, you know, there, there's a little bit of a bias there. [00:10:00] so I didn't, you know, the meetings are at night.
For the most time. So you have to have childcare or they're during the day in the planning commission case. So you need to be wealthy and be able to be gone for a whole day, for a planning commission meeting every two weeks. Right. So it automatically sets a certain set of people out of the picture, which is a problem.
So I need to start to think about how we can change that problem so that, that, I just want to pause on that for a moment and acknowledge that while I was serving as an elected official, my family and my wife, you know, supported that. And it was hard because I would be gone at night. Or I would have meetings all through the, you know, a certain segment of the day.
And now I work for myself. So now, and I have for a long time. We have a small business here in San Jose that's done very well. And we now, we have an online brand. So I do have, the ability [00:11:00] to, work for myself, for lack of a better word. So I set my own schedule. I can be very autonomous in that way.
Not everybody has that luxury. And I acknowledge that and wanna make sure that we open the, the ability to serve and to, especially to give information to everybody. So, Right on. Yeah. It, it, it access , access is, is super critical. It's super critical. And, you know, I, I think from a, a larger, society kind of conversation we've been having about who has access and who doesn't and how that's like not fair, like, I had a friend who was an anthropologist that was studying at Berkeley.
Mm-hmm. but his focus was how neighborhoods were laid out based on, like segregation policies in the forties and fifties, which there's some really late night conversations that kind of blew my mind on like, oh, like the size of places [00:12:00] and they're located and what's located near them is related to this type of policy type stuff.
Yeah. That seems really boring until you realize how impactful it is in everyone's lives. And, and so like, who's making those decisions? Who, like, you know, if you have to have childcare and you can't afford it, you're kind of cut out of that decision making process. Great example of this, everybody can really wrap their head around easily was in Los Angeles when I was living in the, in LA in the early nineties, they were spraying for mosquitoes with Mela on via helicopters.
So they were started all over East LA and they were spraying, you know, Oh yeah, they're spraying, they're trying to get rid of, I forget what it, West Nile or whatever it was at that moment. And so we all have to support it. Well, all of a sudden, the fruit, the whatever the past they were trying to eradicate moved into the Hollywood Hills and towards the west side.
And so they started to do the same spraying and all of a sudden everybody got upset and stopped cuz they were concerned about their health effects of the [00:13:00] spring when it was in East and hills, East LA not a peep. As soon as the spring went into West Hollywood, into the hills, done, stopped. So, you know, environmental justice is not some nebulous idea that's out there.
It is a real thing. And it happens every day all over the world. So, And this is that inclusion? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. It
All right. I don't wanna like dwell on, on this too much, but, I, I feel like we could probably do like, Four days of podcast just on examples like this. Yeah. , you know, who was, who was really awesome in this and brought a lot of the environmental and social justice issues together for the first for, and really brought it up onto a big stage is Van Jones.
So, you know, he's gotten a little more controversial, but you, you, if, I dunno if you remember, he was originally appointed very [00:14:00] early in the Obama administration to work on this exact thing. And then he said something very unfortunate. He said something mean about a Republican and so he was forced to reside.
Hmm. Cause he said something mean he had a different standard for some people. So, and you know, he's a man of color and that was really interesting. So I, I, yeah, I, so I followed him for a long time. He started in the building, in construction trades as a union rep up in Oakland. And he was involved in the environmental movement and trying to bring the working trades and the environmentalists together in a United way.
Uh, and that's where Obama picked him from. So he's been working on this intersection of social justice jobs and the chemical exposures that people have and those kind of things for a long time. So he, he's become more of a public figure now, but that was his origin. Oh, right on. Yeah. So I guess this is probably a, a good time as any to bring up this concept, of like, so we said environmental justice, [00:15:00] and you say anything with justice at the end in today's modern politics and, , half the people will be like, Yeah, half the people get really upset.
Um, do you have any thoughts on, I guess, how to navigate this political environment? Cause before we started recording, you mentioned this idea that, and I'll, I'm gonna paraphrase it poorly correct me, but, but politics is the act of getting everyone to kind of play together nicely. Yeah. And that's kind of the antithesis of what I think a lot of people think politics is in today's world.
Um, could you talk maybe, how do you, I mean, somebody got fired for saying something mean, which is kind of ridiculous at, at its face, but it it's also the world we live in. So how do we navigate that? Or do you have thoughts on This is a really big problem in question. We have, we have to be in community together.
We have to, You know, one, one, I am not currently a practicing Baha, but I was [00:16:00] raised in the Bahai faith, which is a religion. My mom still practices and they believe in something called consultation, for making their administrative structure. And it, that is where you have an idea and you bring it and offer it to the group, and then you surrender and it's not your idea anymore.
So that getting into that level of like detachment from when you have your idea into how it developed, you can still advocate for it, right? You're still advocating for your idea and hoping it, it does well, but being able to recognize when it's not right and, and adopt or synthesize everybody's components together is, is really cool.
Uh, the Bahi faith also doesn't have any priests, so there's no person that says, this is the way Nice. So it's a consultation that happens inside the community. So it, it was again, another model for me and probably how I think, you know, certain, Very much so. at local level office, we see our [00:17:00] neighbors, we see them in the grocery stores.
We, we interact with them. It's much harder to be really mean to them. It still happens sometimes people get really upset with each other at a local level, but it's sort of the rare extreme. Right. campaign time, it gets worse. So, but I will be sitting next to a person that I'm politically totally opposed to.
Uh, there was a county supervisor we didn't agree on almost, I would say 80% of our votes on land use issues were opposite each other. Mm-hmm. Do you have a question for myself or one of the folks that have been on the podcast before? If so, head over to our Meaningful revolution community area where you can ask questions, meet like-minded folks, get engaged in this conversation of living a life that you've designed for yourself, because it's gonna be much more powerful if we can do it together.
I'd love to see you there. You can sign up for [00:18:00] [email protected], linked below in the show notes here for this podcast episode. So let's get back to it, guys. He would to, to his community and the views that he represented. I'm fuzzing out. Am I fuzzing out on your end there a a little. Okay.
Uh, you're, okay. He was, he was really committed to his, what, his viewpoint. And he was very genuine and he listened to people. So, and most of the elected officials at a local level are there for really awesome reasons. Even if they're a real estate agent to get their name id, they're still trying to do a really good job, right?
I would say 95% of them. So support them, applaud them for serving, applaud them for making a tough vote and talk to them. They need more people to talk to them, but they talk to each other. When you go to, to Washington, there used to be social gatherings with people. I, I've never worked in Washington. I don't ever wanna work [00:19:00] in Washington.
I have friends that work in Washington, bless them. So not for me. but they. The social connections between people of different types have been destroyed. Mm-hmm. and I personally feel like it happened in something called the K Street Project, which was part of the contract for with America and the K Street project.
When they took, when the Republicans took power, they went to all the lobbying houses on Case Street and they said, If you have a Democrat on your staff, you cannot lobby us. And there was a mass firing of Democratic lobbyists throughout Case Street, and those are the lobbyists who set the bills. It was a very strategic way to do it.
And it put, you know, it, it put the, the people that were the donors at that time to that party in power in a very real way. [00:20:00] So in, in the lobbying firms. So, and that, that destroyed, Communication between people. And so, and it's never recovered. It's like how little fits and starts and little groups of one or two electeds get together with members of the opposite party, or they play one baseball game a year against each other.
Um, and, and that's part of a huge part of the challenge. And now there are also fundraising. We haven't even talked about the money, but that's a, let's just set that aside for this conversation. , about, just about the, the connection to each other is super important. They have to see each other as friends and it wash.
I don't know how to make that happen now in Washington, cuz they also have to come back here to their districts. Mm-hmm. and California is pretty far from Washington, so that plane flight is expensive and hard on families. So, you know, there, there's a lot to navigate there. but we, we definitely have to figure out a way for our elected officials to [00:21:00] start to, to.
Be social with each other and civil with each other. So I, I say the art of politics is just the art of getting along of people getting along. That's it. The art of politics is the art of people getting along. We put all this, those art, you know, big structure around it. We have our elections, but what it really comes down to is, hey, me and a bunch of my buddies, and we're gonna call ourselves the Democratic Party.
We're gonna go elect this person. Oh, we're a bunch of independents, you know, we're going to go here. Independents aren't organized by, by statement. And then you have the, the Republicans. So I think we have done some really good things in California though, like getting rid of the ballot designation on local offices for party.
There's no party affiliation listed on any of the local offices. There is for a state, you know, once you get to the state level and you get to the federal level, obviously it's still listed. So I'm a big fan of that. I think that's a really good thing. So people shouldn't be looking for an r a D. Or an I, Yeah, they should be looking at who are the [00:22:00] people, who is this person?
I, I also think rank choice voting has some merit and needs to be examined more closely, has flaws. Everyone, every system has flaws. We have, we're broken now, so , you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so yeah, I think people getting along is super important and it becomes from, they have to have connection together to something, you know, be, to get being community with each other.
And we've turned politics sort of into this art of a brawl as opposed to the art of getting along. It's a, it's, you know, some people look at it as just there's a net winner and a net loser, and I don't think of it that way. I think of it as politics is the totality of us, and how are we doing as a totality.
Yeah. I, I, I love that idea of shifting the focus of like, how is my community doing versus. The group of friends that vote for one particular person or another. Yeah. having like a, So I [00:23:00] did, I lived in Arkansas for five years for work. a beautiful part of the country, Very different from California, very different from Illinois, very different from Indiana.
All the other places I've, I've lived. and, and what always struck me about living in Arkansas is the people at an individual level, for the most part were great, right? Mm-hmm. , even though my politics, I, you know, didn't grow up in the Bible belt, so there's a lot of that kind of stuff. You know, you never talk about politics or religion.
And here we are bringing it up on a podcast, so forgive us, but, just point that out. I was, yeah, so like tough topics. This is how people get along is by talking about tough topics. Yeah. No, Oh, totally, totally. And, and I, I, I think holding a space too, of just acknowledging we're different, but like, that's awesome.
You know, like, [00:24:00] so I love the people in Arkansas. I love the beauty of the state. And there were a couple of folks who did not want to, you're either believed in what I wanted to believe or not, and I, I think you find that everywhere, but when you don't believe in what the majority of the group does, it's a lot more, the contrast is much higher.
Mm-hmm. , how do you think through, like if there's someone that doesn't at a local level, want to. I is only in it for a team or a side versus what's great for the community or how do you shift that focus? Well, it let, let me give, I tend to, you know, advocate very strongly for the preservation of agriculture.
I think you read in the beginning that urban ag, edge ag I think is incredibly important. Food security is so important and we, we went to a place where we just thought the highest best use of land was through development. And that's literally hard baked into our [00:25:00] environmental impact reporting process here in, in the United States and in California.
So one of the big things that, that, oh shoot, I just lost my train of thought there. I was, I was about to go down a different financial rabbit hole. I'm like, that's not what he asked. Don't go there. remind me the focus of the question again. Cause I was about to go down a, an environmental, yeah.
Oh, this probably is related, but how do you deal with folks that don't see the community as the focus? Yeah, so, so I have this strong belief and, and I, and I think well-researched and backed up opinion about if we should convert Ag land at the edge of an urban area. My colleague, he has a well researched and deep commitment to seeing return on investment and building of new houses or industrial space or mm-hmm.
high tech campus. So he is committed to what he believes is true. I'm committed to what I believe is true. Both those things can [00:26:00] happen and we can make a vote and whoever prevails in that vote, that's whose it is and now you move forward. Okay. , that's the other, what is the other option to keep yelling at him.
If I lost every single time Yeah. I would stand up and try to win the next one. Right. And he's gonna do the same thing. Right on. Is, is there, I'm curious now, is there space to like a yes and like, can we Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The yes ands, I mean, if you go to really good functioning, elected bodies and watch the process, you can watch Yes.
Ands happen. So, open space authority board, you know, I, I made a joke that, you know, we're elected to save butterflies. It's partially true, right? , but you know, we have a big butterfly preserve So it is something that we've done and, we still have controversy between us, but yet we should all be on the [00:27:00] same team, right?
We're all on the same team. We're all really unified. But of course, we're gonna have disagreements about, you know, how much access mountain bikes versus horses should have. How do we combine those two with the hikers with little kids where, you know, So there's a lot of things for us to go and work on.
Mm-hmm. But when it's done, we support each other and we move forward. And if, if we didn't agree, we monitor it. And if we see data that's coming out that's bad, we try to bring it back up. And you try to change it again. So, and admit when you're wrong. You know, part of it is, is we all have to be willing to say, Hey, I, I, my view wasn't the view that prevailed.
Where this gets a little bit tricky is when you get into the underrepresented communities we talked about a moment ago. Mm-hmm. So, because if you really are, you know, having the pollution from the power plant just go on this little 10% and the people in that 10% are saying, Hey, clean up the power plant, they have a point.
Mm-hmm. But the rest of the [00:28:00] 90% don't see it the same way. They're not concerned about it. So that never gets voted on. So part of an elected official's job is to find those examples and bring them to light and make them just, that's justice. , and it can be on whatever side. It could be one developer who got, he should have had his parcel develop, but the guy who wrote the map didn't like his daughter.
And so left him out, you know, a hundred years ago from some lot line. Okay, what, how do we rectify that? That was a weird, that has never happened. That was not a concrete, not referencing any cases. Nobody seen me on that one. so yeah, so, you know, the, there there's a, a lot of nuance and the reality comes to whatever is also true right now may not be true in the future.
Uh, we see this. all types of decisions that we make. And this especially true with laws. You know, we have laws [00:29:00] here in all, every part of the world. But here in San Jose, I know some laws that we have in our planning regulations that needed to be fixed cuz they had to do with how many carrier pigeons you could keep at your house.
very pertinent that the turn of the century of the, in the turn of the 19 hundreds not so important anymore. If somebody is a carrier, pigeon fanatic and they have an amazing thing that, yeah, okay, we should have some regulation and some thing. For the one person that has that still in San Jose, that law does not need to be on the books anymore.
It just confuses everything. So time for that law to get removed. That's a, that's an example of a, you know, driving without shoes on. You know, I, I think there was a law in California of you can't drive without your shoes on. Right. strange. Okay. Yeah. Right. Okay. So I don't know if that was helpful. That sort of answered the question.
Yeah, yeah. No, no, definitely, definitely. It, it's just kinda work it out and part of the intention of, of asking that [00:30:00] question is to, like, you don't hear in the news or out in the world enough. I think kind of what it is more on the local level on, you know, it is people disagreeing, but people also like putting it behind behind them when they don't get their way.
Or like, you know, that that messy middle of that actually makes, I think government a lot more interesting than just people yelling at clouds and at each other. You know, like nobody wants to be in that environment. I, I think making that difference of, okay, like we found a cool solution where everyone kind of gets something, or the data allowed us to make a solid decision is the world I think we all hope we live in.
Um, so I, I guess maybe a question. On that point is, is there a way that we should be communicating government decision making at a local level more so that that's a little bit more like, Oh, this [00:31:00] is how it really is, versus, Oh, they pass this thing that is now, you know, kind of obscure of 90% of the population.
Yeah. government as an elected official, I wanted to hear from the widest variety of people I could, because I knew a hundred percent I was gonna hear from the lobbyist. Wow. Okay. So my job then is to go beyond the lobbyist and beyond my echo chamber and go find as many people that want to talk about a subject.
So for me, I had my unique processes that did. And it has dramatically changed over the course of my life. As you can imagine, it's information and where the public square is, as we were talking about earlier, where people are getting, their information has changed. Finding those, those voices has become different.
Um, and it is really hard. So it's not about tweeting your position and getting a bunch of people to bandwagon on it. That's [00:32:00] not what I'm talking about here. Mm-hmm. , this is about when you're really making a tough choice. Going at it with the, the student's mind as an elected official, because I know the, the lobbyist is coming, He's gonna, The lobbyist can be lobbyist.
I agree with, from a nonprofit, The lobbyist could be a lobbyist that, you know, is from the oil and gas industry that I'm not really friendly with, but I, I know that they're both coming so, Hmm, whatever the decision would be. A developer, a lot of times in local politics or a union talking about pay, pay, so the, the lobbyists are there and the lobbyists will activate their base.
So you'll be getting a lot of information from the base of the movements. I wanna hear from the people that are not highly vested in the solu, in the situation and hear what they think. Mm. Those voices that I want to hear to help me formulate my decision. I know what my friends are gonna say. I make sure I check in with my friends, I make sure I talk [00:33:00] to the lobbyists.
They're taking the time to think about this. They have a lot of really good insights cuz this is what they do. The, is whatever the issue is. They work on this issue so they have important information. Gotta listen. Right? They may be right a lot of times, so, but I also want to make sure that I'm hearing voices from the unaffected who have opinions.
Now finding informed opinions is more challenging. So, So it takes the elected official reaching out, but it also takes the community member being willing to engage and think about and respond to a, a poll. If, you know, if your local elected official sends you a poll on what you think is important, respond to it, let 'em know it is.
Otherwise the squeaky wheel is gonna get all the grease. And one of the things that we have to do in government is try to try to not fix a squeaky wheel prog problem that only affects one or two people with all of our resources. So that's really easy. Oh, the, the mayor's house has the pothole. [00:34:00] The mayor in San Jose lived down the street for me.
There was a pothole in front of her house and it didn't get fixed for a long time. I think that was an example of, Hey, I don't pull favors. She was a good mayor. So , she did a lot of really, really good things. And she's passed away now, but she, she was amazing. So she didn't pull the trigger. She didn't make the pothole in front of her house get paid first.
Because it wasn't the prior, there was a system, there was a process and sometimes maybe if it had been a street or an area that had a lot of traffic, that would get fixed on with a special dispensation, but not a less used road. Right. But on, So I think that leads really well into the, this next question as, as someone who has been paying a lot more attention to politics probably the last five years than I ever had in my, in my life.
Um, how do you know if, or how would you think about figuring out if someone going into politics is a good ag or not? Like [00:35:00] are there things, what red flags to look out for, I guess green flags to be like, Oh, this is like, I know outreach and trying to get those voices that are not the loudest seems to be one of the, the points we've made so far.
Yeah. Is there anything other to look for? I really believe that people need to be involved with the organiz. Four, they decide to run for the office. Mm-hmm. So, you know, if you don't know anything about the organization and you don't have any vested like connection to it, I'm gonna speak really sternly here.
If you don't have a kid in the schools, or you don't have any grandkids and you hate public schools, why would you run for a school board to rip it down? Okay. Then make, you know, there, there's some deceitful practices in school board races that we're definitely seeing a lot of people run that don't have an interest in making that agency do good work.
They have interest in destroying the agency. [00:36:00] some members of the Republican party do this at a federal level. This is the tactic is to say government is bad. All government is. We have to destroy government. Okay? If we don't have government, we don't have roads, we don't have police forces, we don't have weights and measures so that I know I'm buying a gram of whatever food that saffron is.
The most expensive. Recently, Saffron is, we're doing some stuff with Saffron. It's expensive. And, yeah. Anyway, so , so you wanna know, you know, that is that weight really what you're getting? This is ancient. This is, you know, weights and measures is ancient stuff. This is government. This is us getting along.
So when you say you wanna break government and no government, you don't know what really, that's not really what you're saying. If really that is your commitment is to not be bothered by anybody. Yeah, there's some good places out in the woods. Go live by yourself. Don't have to interact with a lot of people.
We're still gonna have rules about how the rest of us are interacting [00:37:00] together. And so this is the role of government and I want it to work well. And if you want it to break, please go do something else. Or break the part that you think is broken, but don't, don't try to break it all because that is gonna be catastrophic.
So not just for, for the people that are invested into it, but for everybody, for the kids coming up, You know, if there's no road to drive to work, you're not getting to work. The, the pothole example. Yeah. Right. So if we just go and spend all of our resources paving the holes in front of the mayor's house, or the influential people's routes to work, yeah.
That's gonna break down pretty quick. And I think we're, we're sort of at a little bit of a place like that, because it's happened at, and I'll go into the money part of it now. The money is the herd voice in government now. Mm-hmm. So whether it's the lobbyist or the people that have time to go and knock on the doors in Washington or fly there or, or do those things or attend the fundraisers, [00:38:00] and then everybody has to use that.
Raised money to buy media, to convince people to vote for them cuz they're not making connections. We have a, we have a race happening right here in Santa Clara, the city of Santa Clara. Mm-hmm. , where the 49ers stadium is. The 49ers are spending, how, what is it now? I think it's like $6 million on the mayor's race in one district for a city council member.
They're spending $106 per voter to convince people something. Wow. What? Yeah, if I'm a little neighborhood activist and I happen to think that San the 49ers should have their books audited, they're gonna run a campaign against me from a candidate who doesn't believe that that is a broken system. Oh, no doubt.
That much money being applied and independent expenditure. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. You can, I, I'm not even touching on the merits. If you like the 49ers awesome. If you think that whatever. No [00:39:00] voice should be that dominant and be able to just to totally dominate like that. Yeah. So they have a vested interest in making sure that these candidates win because they don't want their books audited in the city, pulling revenue from them.
So that's, that's broken government right there because that squeaky wheel voice with one viewpoint is able to dominate the conversation. So, that's what you wanna get away from. So now I know that I happen to have read something and I think this sort of interesting, the special, the independent expenditure campaign for this one candidate made his wife so upset cuz he's considered on the side of the 49ers that she started yelling and he probably is not gonna support them now cuz they made him, made themselves toxic to him.
Oh, I don't know. Maybe he will still, who knows. Yeah. you know, it's, it is interesting how that can backfire sometimes too. You know, we talked a moment ago about, ear earlier before we got on [00:40:00] about where I think we are in, in culture right now. And I do think that in the United States we're sort of in that same time we were at the Robert era between the 1860s and 1920s or really before World War I, that you're seeing these massive industrial empires put up and try to support their messaging.
So, and you're seeing very high profile people take these roles of, you know, great social leadership. I think this is not a bad thing. It's not a good thing, it's a thing. It is. Out of the Robert Barons, we got some, you know, Stanford University by us is an institution that wouldn't exist without Leland and Stanford's, you know, domination over two railroads over the course of his life, right.
and they used media and travel as [00:41:00] their way, main ways of influencing. There's some really interesting, backstories and PBS has done some specials on this and there's some really good stuff around going and taking a look at those robber Barrons and what, what they thought and how they got their message out.
They bought media outlets. They wind and dined politicians. They elected themselves senators. I mean, they got themselves appointed in Leland's case, Sanford case, right? so, you know, there, there's this, none of this stuff is new. We've had it before. And what ha what can we do with this new modern connected super, a world where so many of us have agency and the independence to express our thoughts for others to hear.
Mm-hmm. , Through these media, podcasting or emails or whatever it might be. The public square is massively changed cuz there's no public square anymore. There's no one [00:42:00] place, there's literally no public square. so everybody is trying to control their square right now and make the biggest square, you know, one, one platform to rule them all.
Right. So that, that concept and, you know, Facebook had a little bit of a period where they sort of got to this place where they, they were really getting adoption. They were connecting people. You found your childhood friends on there that you hadn't seen. And forever, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm in my fifties, right?
So for me it was like, Oh God, I hadn't seen you in So I grew up on Guam. You know, I, I have go back. So, so for, so for me, it, it was, it was really connecting and then I think it really started to push into the advertising place where they started to decide, they went down the decision path of becoming a platform that sold our data, and that's how they made money.
So, totally, you know, I had friends that worked there very early [00:43:00] in Facebook, and so I, you know, a friend asked me about when it became public. He's like, Friends, help friends. I need you to open a Facebook account. So , that's, so I definitely, you know, thought the platform was amazing and I still do, I still think it's good.
I still think there's other amazing platforms, but no, there's no platform anymore that we're all coming to, that we're all unified on, and we're hearing different voices without yelling at each other. So how we can get to that, that platform, I, I wish I knew I would, I would not, I would be a billionaire. I would be, you know, doing my path to.
Robbing my parents So if I, if I knew that, but, that I don't think that there'll be another, I don't, I don't think there's gonna be one. I don't know. So, Yeah. I know Twitter's, you know, Elon, we're, we're recording this. Elon is what, a few days into controlling Twitter and he's trying some different things.
I'm very interested to see what he does. He's trying the [00:44:00] subscription models to get away from advertising. Okay. I, I personally like that I will pay to not have my data mind. Yes. Please sign me up. So, so I don't know. I don't know what it will be. It will be very interesting to see, but I do know that the way that we've done it, where a big industry dominates the ads on the platforms or big campaign spending, like by the 49ers dominates the, the platforms or the communications is not the way that we get out of the challenges we're in.
We get out, we get out of the challenges by bringing us all together in collaboration and coming up with a good solution that we're all buying in together. Even if we think it's not perfect, we know what we're trying to fix. And we also know that the other people are human that are with us. Yeah. Because we have to get along a hundred percent.
So having, you know, worked in tech for a while, worked in the valley for a bit for Apple, [00:45:00] which I think has done a lot. I think the privacy thing has been really good for combating and pushing against this advertising model, which then leads to upsetting people, gets eyeballs and, you know, lines drawn and all that kind of stuff that we were talking about.
But I, I do think advertising causes that incentive the money inside for being a jerk because it's rewarded financially in a lot of ways. Mm-hmm. , I think personally, If we're going to have a online public square, it's probably gonna have to actually be run by some government institution versus a private institution because of that profit incentive.
And I think subscription stuff is going to be great. It'll be interesting. I noticed in the three days or four days at Elon's owned Twitter that we went from, very, So like during like the Trump [00:46:00] years, it was very, a lot of viol, you know, it was, you know, kind of like the scummy armpit of the internet.
I, I've heard friends talk about it. Mm-hmm. , when some of the like disinformation and nastiness was like kicked off from a lot of the work that the Twitter safety groups did, it seemed to be like, Oh, it's more. You're following news, you kind of like old internet feel for me. and I've noticed that that kind of vitols kind of come back in a lot of the people that I was following and comments and stuff.
And I think you, you're not gonna be able to sustain a subscription for a long period of time if you're having this information environment that feels like this. Like, you know, fog of doom type , where it's like you're gonna run into stuff that is people just saying stuff to upset people versus having that, that conversation.
Yeah. so I'm not sure if you have, do you [00:47:00] think that would be a good idea to have of like, you know, I, I think it's, it'll be interesting to see, you know, one. Any rule you make, you'll have people that figure out a way to break it and game it. Yeah. A hundred percent. So, you know, it's like, oh shoot, Okay, this is the pigeon rule.
Right. Right. You know, So there, there was a reason they came up with the numbers at the day, at the time, but they made, people will automatically try to break 'em. So what you're trying to do when you're making rules like this, is you're trying to give some elasticity to them. Mm-hmm. , which is really tricky.
And this is where AI fails. So, you know, a, this you can't, it's really hard to bake that into You know, there's a reason that, the, well, this is the last I heard. The military is still considering a, a combination of an ai, flight flight program and a. Human pilot the best for combat. I, I believe that's still true.
[00:48:00] so there is this, the idea that together we're better So I think we have to start to do that now. I run a, i, I have a very, my, our brand, my wife's brand, has a very big social media presence. So we have a YouTube channel with almost 400,000 subscribers. Wow. We have a closed Facebook group with 50,000 people in it.
Um, so I see this question play out. The way I see it really play out and the way I've tried to talk about it, it, that vitriol that you're talking about. Mm-hmm. is in our group. We, we focus on this, This is a, intermittent fasting group and we, we recommend a lot of food choices as well, but we support nutritious food.
So we get a lot of arguments between people advocating for a certain diet style. You have to be carnivore, you have to be vegetarian, you have to be vegan, you have to be keto, you have to be paleo. We, we don't, we're, [00:49:00] we're agnostic on, on that. And the hardest ones are getting the vegans and the, the vegans and the carnivores to support each other.
Cuz they're both working on their health goals. That's why they're in the group. Mm-hmm. , they're both there to be successful with their health goals. That's what unites them. So all my team, we don't pay for any advertising. We don't boost any post into our groups. All of our growth is organic. All of our followers are non-paid.
We didn't run campaigns for them. So we have a very unique, I have a very unique perspective. I think a lot of ads and campaigns and we don't, and we have, so we, our audience is different than a lot of other people's audience. That close group of 50,000 people every month, 30,000 of them are active in the group and take action in the group.
Wow. Think about that. So that, that's an, I feel really, really, really proud of that. And I feel really, really proud when I see a carnivore support of vegan because they're both trying to get [00:50:00] to their health goal and they were able to forget that this person is diametrically on an opposite side from them on an issue as important as what food they eat.
But they're uniting around that one goal. So I, I don't think it's gonna be one square, I think it's squares of interest maybe. Okay. Is what we'll develop. And so the squares of interest and if you can start to have those squares of interest, if someone's coming in and trying to destroy the government agency, the example I gave earlier.
Mm-hmm. , we had someone like that get elected to the open space authority board. He was there to destroy it. This was before I got on the board. And he quickly realized that was not gonna happen and got off cuz he realized that him being there served no purpose. He was better at arguing for his viewpoint outside of that agency than trying to destroy it from.
So, you know, , you know, if that makes sense. So, you know, he then could just focus on his, his argument on the [00:51:00] outside, but inside the agency there was no room for that argument cuz it was not, it was not part of the structure of the decision that he was making. It was not part of that body that was making that decision.
So, I don't know, that was a little bit of a tangent going off there, but I, I think No, I, I, it, it makes sense cuz it sounds like instead of, you know, trying to explore should the government have like a, a social media space where people can talk about things. If it comes down to like, individuals moderating their communities and, and shepherding the behaviors that make it so that, you know, a carnivore and herbivore can coexist for the same goal of getting healthy, like, , that, that seems appealing.
That makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. And you know, as a fasting group, this applies to religions too. So one of the biggest, data points for research we have on fasting is from Ramadan fasts, You know, the [00:52:00] Muslim faith. They every year practice a fast and intermittent fast for a bump. It's amazing, amazing science all over.
And the, there's high degree of certainty about them complying with what they said because they're doing it for an internal religious reason. So when Ramadan fasting happens, we have a big presence of Muslims inside of our group. And I love seeing the Christian person who's never interacted with a Muslim person.
Oh, you're fasting for religious reasons. Tell me, you know, in understanding and humanizing each other amazing Yeah. So you, they're, they're in the group. That I have cultivated the square that I have cultivated for that experience. So I don't think government can provide that. We can provide some things like the internet mm-hmm.
to create that space. But I don't think that we can provide the platform. I think that would not be good. Mm-hmm. , [00:53:00] it actually, people would walk away from it. Yeah. I think, I think you've seen it in some of these other, spaces that have been created with, trying to to be like the, everything that everyone without any of the like social norms, I guess.
And so this leads me to another question I'm curious about for you. having a big space, like space focused around a particular, like focused around fasting. there's this idea to take a step back in technology that like. When human progress, there's been technological development, and then societal advancements kind of, you know, catch up.
So like the inventing like the printing press, things get kind of crazy and then we realize, oh, we need some journalistic standards. We can't just slander people. Like, And so wells kind of catch up and society catches up with the new technology. do you think that, [00:54:00] is it maybe like more policy or norms or standards or culture around moderation that'll cause these spaces to thrive?
Or is there another thing maybe that makes sense that you've seen? yeah. well, I, I definitely don't think government, like I said, should have that role. I think that there's things that the government can do really well, protect us from floods, make sure we have clean water coming to our house. Make sure the smokestack down the road for me doesn't blow.
You know, cancer causing agents onto the school, the elementary school next door. You know, those are all kinds of roles that government plays that are very important that only government can play. but where we get a little bit tricky is when government tries to go outside of that and, and take roles that really, I, I do believe in the market and rules that, people create and their ingenuity [00:55:00] is really what is gonna drive the engagement.
So, you know, the, and, and it is real connection. So I don't think that you can, you can manufacture the connection on top of people. So if that makes sense. So you can't tell somebody you're gonna care about this, that, that's not, that doesn't work. That was, you know, old Soviet Union model. Right. So, and they, they saw the Beatles and they loved the Beatles and they just wanted to get the Beatles into the country
Right. You know, our, our. Anyway, So the, the, the idea that, it's gonna be one way I think we should not, it's gonna be organic and multifaceted in a living system. So one of the things that we've done is we've gotten very reduct stick in all of our models. Our health model is reductionistic kill all the bugs.
Our food model is reductionistic one, plant only. our [00:56:00] political model is, is done. I only believe one thing. I don't believe anything else. So we have to get back into living systems. We have to return, you know, I, I use the word regenerative. There's regenerative ag culture, there's regenerative medicine, there's regenerative finance.
You go down the list, there's a movement into this. Some people have, you know, solar punk is a little bit, you know, off there sort of, but you know, that's a little more pie in the sky stuff. But, you have these ideas about regeneration where the system is a living system and you're going for the most diversity cuz it's through that diversity that the real effects and growth happen.
It is not in the reductionistic model. So the reductionistic model brought us to where we are, but it actually is a very finite way of dealing with stuff. It doesn't create the, unending. Prosperity that something like solar punk or [00:57:00] regenerative can do. So regenerative ag, for example, if you have animals that are on the same land as plants, which currently is not very allowed in the United States, the droppings from the animals help fertilize the soil and make for better crops year after year after year after year, and the nutrition value goes up.
Mm-hmm. , just on nutrition value, did you know that the United States, our value of nutrition in our crops is like 80% less than it was 50 years ago? So one carrot Wow. Has it, It varies by crop and it varies by harvest, and it varies by growing. But the standard metric is two to three times. I think that's the, the median, nutrition value that a food had in the 1960.
It's crazy. Ah, that is nuts. And that's because we've done this chemical model of we kill everything in the soil. The soil needs to be alive. That's how it gets nutrition into the plant. And that's how we get nutrition into ourselves. [00:58:00] And that's why we have chronic disease. So, and this is where regenerative and personalized medicine are starting to take off.
Mm-hmm. So this is why our message resonates so strongly. Intermittent fasting, it's free. Anybody anywhere in the world can do it. That's it. Yeah. And it, it, the metabolic changes are amazing. The New England Journal of Medicine in 2019 put out a study, a, a big op-ed piece. It was a, a meta study, meta-analysis right before the pandemic in December.
And it said, Physicians. This is a New England Journal of Medicine, and they're recommending this to all physicians. Intermittent fasting should be your first intervention in all of these conditions. And if you go through the conditions, it's almost all the lifestyle diseases. We have diabetes on and on, and on, a cancer, on and on and on.
Intermittent fasting should be your first intervention. There's a lifestyle intervention. Anybody anywhere in the world can do it. And it's free. It doesn't cost any money. Doesn't cost any time. [00:59:00] So we, we feel like we have a really strong message and we're empowering people. Now we have a, we have a business too.
If people are stuck, they come and we give them help, but we offer lots of free stuff. So most of the people can take mass with advantage of that. So, It. That's why we have that group, because everybody's there for that free information that we're giving and it's of value to them, and they're doing it together in a community.
We lead community tie-ins and we create community in that group. It's called, we call it the Resetter Collaborative. and it really is a collaborative between everybody. So, that's my model on creating a town square and everybody has to create their own town square. And I, I am not gonna be communicating to somebody that doesn't want to intermittent fast.
They're not gonna be in my group. You know, if they come in and they start yelling about intermittent fasting, all the people are gonna , you know, that are there all the 50,000 people, many of whom are MDs or heads of [01:00:00] hospital systems? I mean mm-hmm. , we have an amazing. informed group of people in that.
So we have all, like, like I said, internists. Literally, I, there was, I remember approving, this was maybe two, three years ago, the head of a major hospital SY system in the Midwest, like multiple hospitals. He's like, I wanna learn about this. He answered the question. Anyway, I just happened to be doing the approvals at that moment and I'm like, Whoa,
And I was, I looked them up, I'm like, Is this really who this is? And I looked it up and I'm like, Oh, it really is. So that gave me a lot of hope that somebody like that would be coming in there. And, and I don't, I've never talked to this person. I've never met them, I never interacted with them again. But just knowing that they were willing to open the door to, to hear that kind of town square that we've created.
Mm-hmm. is how we create community. So I don't think it's gonna be on one platform. Maybe going back to the original question, it's, it's gonna, it's gonna evolve it wherever. Now I want people to come to my platform cuz I don't have to pay to [01:01:00] reach them inside that Facebook group. They keep wanting me to pay.
I, I. So it's the group that we created and we try to get as much reach we can, but we created it for everybody so they, they don't throttle my team. The collaborative members posts, they get tons of likes. People will post their win and 400 people will like it. Awesome. What, what an amazing gift for everybody.
So that vegan in the carnival, they both just like that. They got a dopamine rush and they feel more connected cuz they like that person's post. They don't even know each other. They're not connected. But now they are connected and they have that common bond and they say, Oh, that person's in the collaborative.
They feel a little softer if they have a negative interaction. Right. yeah, I love that. So I, I guess they have a through line here. Really, like the conversation we've had today is about community. It's, it's engaging in your community and the decision making process there, which we call government and making it work for everyone and, and, and being okay when there's disagreements, but like [01:02:00] understanding that.
We're all in it together, go building these online spaces, maybe built around co cause communities is , you know, like intermittent fastings or, you know, hunting or, you know, mobile trains or whatever it is. Right? Yeah. You know, find, it's like that connection of pass and you're gonna be in multiple communities, right?
So Yeah. Yeah. I'm a d and d nerd, right? So I grew up playing Me too. Dragons. Awesome. , Yeah. Play. So my 50th birthday was right at the start of the pandemic, so I couldn't do anything I planned. So my buddies and I who are from high school were scattered all around the, the US I think everybody's in the US Yeah.
Um, we, we started playing d and d online with a, with somebody, DMing us and we're still going two years, more than three years later now. We're still playing together. So I kept playing. Some of them had kept playing their kids. They taught their kids, you know, so it, it was a wide variety, but we we're, we're a diverse group of people.
We don't [01:03:00] all think the. You know, we, we all have massively different, political opinions from each other or whatever, but no, we're not massively different. We're all pretty, you know, we're all from Guam, right? So, yeah. One of my friends did join. We did, we do have a guy who's a local friend of mine, who, who's in the group now too.
So he's not from Guam, but everybody else, and, you know, we, we know when we disagree, we're not fighting about it. We're all smart people. And Yeah, yeah, yeah. Willing to create those connections with each other. So the d and d is like a big thing for me. So like, my Twitter feeds are really cultivated with d and d stuff.
So that's the only, that's the, what I have on my, I have my foreign policy and my d and d on my Twitter feed. So if I want to like, think about those two things, I know, oh, I go to this platform. I have it curated for me to get this information. And my Facebook group is work. So Facebook is hard for me to go to any kind of, I see some of my personal friends, but as soon as I opened up, the notifications are like
Right on. So, you know, [01:04:00] So it, it's harder and harder for me to go into that. and I, the other platforms in Instagram is, I, I don't really see how Instagram creates community. So Instagram doesn't have a community functionality right now. It has, it has a broadcasting functionality, and a, a platform like, but there's, there's no town square that, there's nothing that is creating that town square that I see on Instagram.
Now. Instagram is part of mea and they have told us that they're taking their messenger is gonna be the unifier across all their platforms. Right. So you're gonna be able to message somebody in the Resetter collaborative on Facebook from your Instagram account very soon. Okay. So that could, that could allow Instagram to maybe grow into more of a community based thing.
Mm-hmm. , Pinterest is the same, Hard to have community. You would see other people that are really vendors and that kind of stuff, but you're not seeing enthusiasts as much. [01:05:00] You know, the, the Reddits of the world, The Reddits, that's more community cuz it's very Yeah. Hyper focused down. I really like Clubhouse.
When it first started it sort of went sideways and yeah, I don't use it anymore, but it was interesting during the pandemic, I think it served a really useful tool. you know, but where's the next, you know, Blue Sky, I guess Jack Dorsey starting something. I don't know what that is. Yeah. So , Kajabi, the learning platform that I keep my courses on hasn't just is rolling out a brand new community section.
So I'll be looking at that is a way to bring everybody into community more for our, our aid programs. so I think there's just lots of levels of the platforms in the community and I don't think there'll be one, one. Just like there's not one platform worldwide that connects everybody. People use WhatsApp differently in different parts of the world, for example, or Telegram or [01:06:00] whatever else is out there.
Yeah. Yeah. My guesstimation, I think you're right on there will be a whole ecosystem of community spaces. Yeah. and we'll have some common rules that we find out through this, like regarding like disinformation, like that's, that'll kill any type of these types of things. Mm-hmm. , if there's bad actors that can run free and all that kind of stuff.
Or, moderation. Like you should have some type of moderation. It doesn't what that looks like. Again, is that the, the fighter pilot AI human model? Is it one or the other? so yeah, I think you're spot on. So I guess, start wrapping it up. is there a belief or mindset that you hold about. Politics and community, I guess since that's kind of, I another way to phrase what we've been talking about, that you think other people that's not common or other people don't, that maybe we haven't talked [01:07:00] about yet or highlighting something we did.
Yeah. So, this drives the people around me really crazy. and it's something I do a little bit differently and it comes from that debate example that I gave very early. I often will argue against myself in decisions, so it's, it's really hard to do, but, cuz you it really hard to, to keep your. Focus and not go into just spinning with possibilities and not doing anything.
But you end up with a much more rich result when you do it that way. So I do it because I don't, I want people to know that I might be wrong. I just had an instance today. I was telling one of my team members, I thought there was something wrong with a post that was about to go out. and I was, I had, was referencing a source material for it and I was resting referencing one page.
And the [01:08:00] thing that they had done was a little bit later in the same chapter of the book my wife wrote. And what they had done was right, but I had seen this other thing and so I thought I was right and I was like, Hey, we need to change this cuz it's not consistent. And she's like, Oh gosh, okay. And then she went and check, you know, just to make sure, and she's like, Oh wait, no, but here's where it is consistent.
And I'm like, Oh, I'm wrong. Right? So quickly, quickly realizing that you're wrong. But also advocating for what you think is something that needs to be heard. So the, the underlying idea there for me was we're really focusing on all of the posts being consistent with a new book that is coming out at the, on December 28th.
So we're really trying to create consistent messaging and have it all, and not reference a book from five years ago, for example, that might be a little bit less current. So I have that macro lens. So I was looking at everything through that lens, right? And coming in and quickly [01:09:00] realized that I was wrong and quickly got out of that.
It took her to remind me the next morning. But you know, that those are the, the kind of critical analysis and quickly surrendering that you have to do now when you're right and you know that something is really important and you can feel it, you can still advocate for it, and you can still try to see if it's a right decision.
Whatever it is that is implemented. You know, if I lo I lose a vote, something is implemented on a political level five years from now. Is it working the way they advertised? Mm-hmm. , can we revisit it? Can we change it? Can we tweak the law as we go along? So we have to constantly be doing that. I, I sometimes in meetings will start the meeting advocating for one view, bring the counter view, and start arguing for that and see what people do with that info.
It's, people don't like it So, so, I get [01:10:00] it. I get that it's not comfortable, but it makes us think better when we do that. Mm-hmm. So can we take the opposite side, get in the other viewpoint, get in the carnivores viewpoint about why they like to eat meat, get in the vegan's viewpoint of why they only eat plants, and at least understand that they, for them may have some truth.
Yeah. Yeah. I, I, Love that. And it touches on one of my core beliefs in that, like, I never believe that I'm a hundred percent right on anything. Like, I like to think that I probably when I'm good and maybe 80% right and that it goes downhill from there. and what that allow allows me to do in my business or in relationships or, you know, communities is try to get curious and be like, What am I, like, I often will be like, What am I missing here?
Like, okay, here's my thinking behind it. What am I missing? And I think that's, that, that key glue, [01:11:00] not taking yourself so seriously that you can't change Mm-hmm. But I love, I love that that idea of come in with both arguments honestly. Right. And be like, Okay, I really wanna understand. Both sides or maybe something I haven't heard and then learn, you know, So I think that's really beautiful.
One of the best parts about having a podcast is getting the interactive people you hadn't met before. And I'd love to invite you into our Meaningful revolution community by going to community.shaba.com, linked below in the show notes. And there you can ask questions, You can meet like-minded folks. We can start working on building a movement together where we all are living into our best selves.
Cause that's what it's all about. So click the link in the show notes below. Again, community.shaad.com if you're interested. Hope to see you there. This is Sean saying continue [01:12:00] with the episode. You know, it's that collaboration or that consultation concept that I mentioned where you, you're putting the idea into the community think, and then you're letting it.
Grow from there. And it may, may sprout in a way you thought it would, and it may go in new ways. And it, the, the more diverse inputs you have, the better the outcome. We see this, this goes to the land, this goes to the health. We know that the microbiome, right, the little beings that are all around us in every part of our world, in the soil, in our gut, on our skin, in our hair, everywhere, on the space station, right?
The, the microbiome is so important. And we have thought for so long that it's just about killing everything. This goes right back to that regenerative model. And so this model of thought, you're bringing other ideas in because the diversity of that thought is gonna make the end result richer. Yeah. Oh, I love that.
[01:13:00] All right. So I don't, That feels like it would be the best spot to end. I have a couple more questions for you. So like, I'm trying to like, Okay. so if someone were to want to get more involved in community or local government, do you have, like, if you're going from zero to beginner, a couple of things to maybe think about or strategies to implement that might help people get some momentum and get some, involvement in that?
Yeah. If you're in the United States, watch a city council meeting. If your city streams their city council meeting, watch one of them and see how they interact. Are they nice to each other? If not, go go to the meeting and tell 'em to be nice to each. Hmm. Tell 'em to do that. , you know, don't take outside of, do to, you know, in California we allow anybody on items that are not on the agenda to speak at the [01:14:00] beginning of public meetings.
And if you have that where you are and you see people not being nice and cooperative, ask 'em to work together. See, see how send, send everybody a message. Take a work together. and if you see a lot of people that are doing that and you decide you want to run for an office or be involved, go start with a commission.
Go start and be involved in something where you are actually seeing what the work is and is it really what you thought it was? So, don't just run for the office cuz you don't like the other person. Go find out about what makes that thing tick and where you could change it. But it starts with you taking the first step and finding out what is actually going on and vote.
You have to vote. I don't care where you are in the world. You know, if you have the ability to vote, you, you, I, I was involved the second election I was ever involved in helping the guy lost the special election by one vote. One vote. [01:15:00] Wow. Somebody else became the assembly member for the rest of that term because of one person and one vote that I didn't successfully help change.
So, that person went on and became, an assistant to the president of the United States. So he's fine. , you know, and it was probably, he didn't win that election cuz then that path would not have opened for him. That's a different conversation about destiny and all that other kinds of stuff. So, Right, Every vote matters, Every vote matters as much as you don't think it does.
It really, it really is important and your elected officials want to hear from you. So if, especially if you reach out with positive stuff, we don't hear positive things. Tell people the positive. Cuz if all we're hearing is the negative stuff, then the squeaky wheel gets attention. So knowing like if you went on a hike or you used the city service and it was really good, or your garbage got picked up really well and the trash person was nice, put a review up, spend two minutes till the city, they did a good job.[01:16:00]
Tell the government they did a good job. Mm-hmm. , I love, I that's so stuff like, you get taught growing up, like be kind when you, you like everything you need to lose in kindergarten, Yeah, totally. Like, oh this is great. Like tell somebody, tell the people that are doing it that it's great. So, that's super great.
So. Alright. so Chloe with that said, we will wrap up there. I don't think we could end on a better. is there any way that people can reach out or get involved or support you or a important cause that you're following? well, regenerative agriculture is incredibly important to me. there's a movie out called Kiss the Ground.
Um, Farmer's Footprint is a non-profit that I support pretty actively. I'm very hopeful with the farm bill that the Fed government is working on right now that is gonna, going to massively change the way we're doing this. Dr. Mark Hyman is highly involved in that work right now before the ad [01:17:00] committee.
Uh, so that's, something that personally, if you live in the United States and you wanna see regenerative food, you wanna see nutritious food on your table, support the changes that are being, that are bipartisan. So they, they were bipartisan, then they went to the Senate and now all of a sudden it's not.
But all the industry folks are on there too, pushing this, the farmers, these Midwest people that are about as red, as red can be that are saying, Hey, we like this regenerative model. We don't have to put cancer killing stuff on our field that makes my kids sick. Yeah. So, you know, so the small farmer is very important and the AG bill right now has a chance to change us back to that small farmer model.
And so anybody that feels motivated writes some comments about how important that is. That would be my call for action. Mark Hyman again, Dr. Rieman, he's doing some amazing stuff on this. Dr. Bush is doing some great stuff on this. Corey Booker is the senator that took a [01:18:00] massive interest. So regenerative ag involves animals.
It's highly, and Cory Booker's a vegetarian. He was able to suspend his vegetarian bias and come and support that concept of the regenerative ag, which I applaud. He modified his thought pattern. Mm-hmm. So this has a chance of getting us away from the five subsidized crops and getting us back to a system of more crops, better diverse diversity and more nutritious food, which is what we need for national security.
Food security matters. Vote with your dollar for your food security. , Right on. Yeah. Cuz that, that's, that would be the action that I would want people to take. You know, intermittent tasking. Yeah. Awesome. If it's right for you, it doesn't cost any money, do that. Come to our platforms. Great. If you wanna take an action right now that the, that's what I want you to do.
Okay. Care about the food that you're putting in your body and vote with your dollars and speak to power and tell 'em, Hey, we want, we want a better system. We want you to get together. [01:19:00] Okay. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Sequoia, thank you so much for this conversation. I absolutely loved it. we'll have some information in the show notes for you.
Uh, maybe a link to the avil so you can comment on it. That would be, I, I think is very worthy. so thank you so much. Yeah, absolutely. This is really fun, Sean. Thank you. So let me spout off for a while. I haven't been able to do that since I left elected office, Well, I'm glad we could provide this. So, all right.
And. We're done recording. All right, so what I really love about the talk that we had with Sequoia was, number one, focusing on local politics. And I know we, we covered quite a bit of area today, but you know, the ability to act and influence and make an impact in your community through this shared set of rules we call government, is super [01:20:00] powerful.
However you feel about it on, on the, political spectrum, it's really important to be participating in this great democratic experiment, right? This experiment in democracy. So I really enjoyed that part of it. picking his brain on just. , you know, things are related to in this grand scheme of the world.
Um, and getting into some tech stuff, which is, is, you know, I think a lot about social media and how it impacts our society and, and stuff. So it was cool to just kind of get into a discussion on that and, and not really make a final decision because ultimately I also really wanna highlight the curiosity of, not holding onto one idea too dear.
You know, being able to hold two different truths, at the same time and, and really trying to do the right thing with the information you have available and [01:21:00] switching or, or being able to change as new information comes in. So that's why I think this episode was really impactful. I hope you took a bunch of notes.
I know I did. and be sure to, check out the links below for, Sequoia's, wife's book, Mindy's book, and, to actually comment on the new Advil that he was talking about, because that is, I'm going to impact everyone. I, I, I think it could be a really good thing. So, I'd like the call to action.
You know, go check it out, Make a comment. Tell people to play nice , because let's together try to build a world that we want to, to see and live in, and it represents our best values. So, with that, guys, we'll see you in the next episode in the Meaningful Revolution. And if you like this video, make sure to check out the video over here.
Uh, the last episode of The Meaningful Revolution, we talked with Trisha Degi. No, [01:22:00] Deggy, right? It's, it's my gy, It's Deggy, Patricia Dougie on, being a working mom out in the, the workplace. So, yeah, check that out over there. You know, we'll see you next time.
