Joe Rogan Experience #1722 - Bartow Elmore

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. NANarrator0:00

      (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music plays) Seed money. Tell me, tell me about all this dirtiness.

   3. BEBartow Elmore0:16

      (laughs)

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      Tell me about these, these monsters-

   5. BEBartow Elmore0:19

      (inhales deeply)

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:19

      ... and the money that they make.

   7. BEBartow Elmore0:21

      Yeah. Uh...

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:22

      How'd you get involved in this, first of all?

   9. BEBartow Elmore0:23

      Yeah, sure.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:24

       How'd ... Why, why'd this become, uh, your field of study?

   11. BEBartow Elmore0:26

       (smacks lips) Well, thanks, Joe, for having me on. This is, this is awesome.

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:29

       My pleasure. Thanks for being here.

   13. BEBartow Elmore0:30

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:30

       I'm excited to talk to you about this.

   15. BEBartow Elmore0:31

       Yeah. So-

   16. JRJoe Rogan0:32

       Very important subject, right?

   17. BEBartow Elmore0:33

       Yeah. For me it was. I... You know, I... It really started with the first project I worked on, the first book I wrote, which was the history of Coca-Cola and its environmental impact around the world.

   18. JRJoe Rogan0:44

       You were just telling us that Pepsi is actually older than Coke, which is surprising.

   19. BEBartow Elmore0:47

       Dr Pepper. Yeah, Dr Pepper.

   20. JRJoe Rogan0:49

       Dr Pepper's older?

   21. BEBartow Elmore0:50

       Yeah. Yeah, Dr Pepper's older, weirdly. And it's-

   22. JRJoe Rogan0:52

       (coughs)

   23. BEBartow Elmore0:52

       You think of it as like the, you know-

   24. JRJoe Rogan0:55

       Yeah, I thought it was like the new kid on the block.

   25. BEBartow Elmore0:56

       Yeah, exactly.

   26. JRJoe Rogan0:57

       That's the oldest?

   27. BEBartow Elmore0:58

       1885. Not the oldest, but it's older than Coke.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:00

       What's the oldest?

   29. BEBartow Elmore1:01

       Coke was 1886. I don't really even know what the oldest one would be.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:04

       So Dr Pepper came along first, then Coca-Cola, and then Pepsi?
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Exactly. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan15:00

      pretty similar in terms of the strength.

   2. BEBartow Elmore15:02

      Exactly.

   3. JRJoe Rogan15:02

      It doesn't make you crazy or anything like that.

   4. BEBartow Elmore15:05

      Exactly. And, you know, it's used for high altitude, um, exertion. It helps people-

   5. JRJoe Rogan15:09

      Hmm.

   6. BEBartow Elmore15:09

      ... at high altitudes and things like that. So, I think one of the things in that book was trying to point that out. That, you know, we were having this discussion about cannabis, but we should have it ... And they are, there are people that are trying to say, "Look, we should be revalorizing," is the word-

   7. JRJoe Rogan15:22

      Hmm.

   8. BEBartow Elmore15:22

      ... "the coca leaf." Like, there's no reason why this thing is, needs to be treated this way.

   9. JRJoe Rogan15:26

      Yeah.

   10. BEBartow Elmore15:27

       So, and-

   11. JRJoe Rogan15:27

       We're stuck though. We're stuck with these, uh, narratives.

   12. BEBartow Elmore15:30

       We are.

   13. JRJoe Rogan15:31

       That's, that's the narrative that cocaine is evil and it ruins lives.

   14. BEBartow Elmore15:34

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan15:35

       Yeah.

   16. BEBartow Elmore15:35

       And I think, you know, uh, again, there's a difference between that kind of purified, uh, powder that's gonna have all this other stuff in it that can cause all these problems versus this like-

   17. JRJoe Rogan15:43

       But the problem is that there is this sort of black market world, and that's the only market to get it. So, it is cut with a bunch of other shit-

   18. BEBartow Elmore15:51

       Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan15:51

       ... that's not supposed to be in there, like amphetamines and fentanyl. And have you ... Are you aware of, uh, Dr. Carl Hart?

   20. BEBartow Elmore15:57

       I don't know if I know Carl Hart.

   21. JRJoe Rogan15:58

       He's a professor at, um, Columbia? And, uh, brilliant guy, who, uh, was or- originally, he was a scientist who was working with drugs, and he was a very straight-laced guy. But then, upon working with them and really understanding the effects and understanding what the propaganda had done in terms of changing the way people viewed these drugs, he then started taking these drugs, like regularly.

   22. BEBartow Elmore16:26

       Hmm.

   23. JRJoe Rogan16:26

       Wow.

   24. BEBartow Elmore16:27

       And is open about it.

   25. JRJoe Rogan16:28

       Mm-hmm.

   26. BEBartow Elmore16:28

       But is also brilliant.

   27. JRJoe Rogan16:30

       Right.

   28. BEBartow Elmore16:30

       So, and he's, you know, a genuine scholar. So, he's a guy who will sit on a podcast and tell you, "I take cocaine, I take heroin. It's lovely." He goes, "Regular heroin." I'm like, "How do you do it?" "I sniff it." And he goes, "It's, it's wonderful. I love it. It makes me feel good. It, it helps strengthens my relationships." And he's like, "You and I should do cocaine together." I'm like- (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan16:49

       "That is the craziest fucking thing anybody's ever said to me that's a professor from Columbia on a podcast. 'We should do cocaine together.'"

   30. BEBartow Elmore16:55

       Right. That's, that's a rarity. Um-
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. BEBartow Elmore30:00

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      Mm-hmm.

   3. BEBartow Elmore30:00

      ... you know, and try and, and reduce greenhouse gases and things like that, people are talking about cars and power plants. After writing this book, I'm like, "No, I'm thinking about everything else." I was just literally just looking at, you know, all the equipment in here and things, like-

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:13

      So much plastic.

   5. BEBartow Elmore30:14

      So much stuff. And all that goes back to this period where they're, like, experimenting with coal tar, experimenting with petroleum and being like, "Wow, we can make this. We can make this." And it was cheap because oil was booming at that time.

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:25

      Right.

   7. BEBartow Elmore30:25

      You know, you could just do it.

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:27

      So they can make caffeine out of oil?

   9. BEBartow Elmore30:30

      Base, yeah, and ultimately it's natural gas, largely now, but at that time, it was coal tar originally for Coca-Cola. And this is, this, talk about sh- kind of s- some shady stuff. You know, Coke has had these long contracts with Monsanto at this point. This is the '40s. And they're like, "Hey, could you make synthetic for us?" But if you look internally at Coke, they're like, "Well, I don't even know if we're gonna buy it."... but we just want more caffeine in the market, because more caffeine means, you know, other buyers who are getting caffeine may use that caffeine, which keeps the price of caffeine down. Um, 'cause Coke's real model was, like, not owning stuff, like making other people do stuff. Like, they were, they were a business that basically just did ... was a middleman in the economy. They didn't, uh, they didn't actually grow the ingredients in their product, and they didn't distribute it. It was independent bottlers who did it. They were kind of like this middleman in the economy. And so for, for Monsanto, they were like, "Hey, go experiment with this. See how it goes." And Monsanto does it. They figure out how to synthesize caffeine from coal tar. And they have to use a base molecule found in that coal tar called urea. And this is true, okay? They make it, and they're like, "Hey, Coke, look. We've got this synthetic for you. Comes from urea, found in coal tar." And Coke's like, "Nah, consumers aren't gonna drink this."

   10. JRJoe Rogan31:52

       Urea sounds like urine. Uric acid.

   11. BEBartow Elmore31:55

       You s- you said it. Okay, this is what's crazy.

   12. JRJoe Rogan31:57

       Yeah.

   13. BEBartow Elmore31:57

       This is in the arch- this is exactly-

   14. JRJoe Rogan31:58

       Oh, really? That's what they said?

   15. BEBartow Elmore31:59

       This is exactly what the chemists ... There's this great oral history at the, um, at one of these archives I went to from one of the chemists who knew what was going on inside the company who said, "Internally, when we were talking to them, they said, 'That sounds too much like urine.'"

   16. JRJoe Rogan32:16

       (laughs)

   17. BEBartow Elmore32:16

       "They're gonna think it's pee." (laughs) And they legitimately initially say, "We're not gonna do it." You know, and they stick with "natural" source caffeine, again coming from the coffee bean and things. Now, they ultimately decide to pivot, because, to your point, they're growing at such a pace, they needed to have synthetic. And y- and m- I, uh, can't prove this, but it seems logical that they're thinking is, "Wait a minute. Consumers are never gonna ask where their caffeine comes from." Look at everyone I've ever talked to.

   18. JRJoe Rogan32:45

       Right.

   19. BEBartow Elmore32:45

       No one knows where the caffeine comes from, right? And so, they do switch to synthetics. And if you go to their website, it's great. It says, "We source our caffeine from tea leaves," so that waste tea leaf story is still part of it, "the, uh, coffee beans," uh, decaf coffee, and then, "appropriate sources."

   20. JRJoe Rogan33:05

       Appropriate?

   21. BEBartow Elmore33:06

       (laughs) Right, which I love.

   22. JRJoe Rogan33:09

       Pee. (laughs)

   23. BEBartow Elmore33:09

       (laughs) So, you know, and a lot of things are made from this.

   24. JRJoe Rogan33:11

       Yeah.

   25. BEBartow Elmore33:11

       But, you know, ultimately then natural gas became the feedstock and things, and it's, a lot of it's produced in China, but-

   26. JRJoe Rogan33:15

       Wow.

   27. BEBartow Elmore33:15

       ... anyway, it's crazy. And so, but it's, that was when I was like, "Oh my gosh! Monsanto-"

   28. JRJoe Rogan33:20

       So that got Monsanto off the ground because then they had a giant project.

   29. BEBartow Elmore33:24

       They had a huge project, you know, with the saccharin and caffeine for Coca-Cola, these big contracts th- that kept them afloat. You can go to Mo- this is, like, you know, readily available information on their website. They'll say, "But for Coca-Cola, we wouldn't exist." So sometimes when I think about the environmental footprint of Coca-Cola, I'm like, it's bigger than just the firm, you know? It's-

   30. JRJoe Rogan33:43

       Right.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   DDT? …

   1. BEBartow Elmore45:00

      the firm called John Franz. And the... This is what's so wild when you go back is, they saw it as the environmentally friendly herbicide. You know what they're trying to replace at that point?

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:13

      DDT?

   3. BEBartow Elmore45:14

      Agent Orange.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:15

      Agent Orange.

   5. BEBartow Elmore45:16

      Yeah. Agent Orange.

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:17

      Oh my God.

   7. BEBartow Elmore45:18

      So let's... The, here's the story. So, so let's go back just a little bit more to get to that. So... And I talk about the whole story of Agent Orange in here, in this book. They first start making, and by they I mean Monsanto, 2,4,5-T, it's a chlorinated hydrocarbon that's an active ingredient in Agent Orange, in 1949 in a little town called Nitro, West Virginia, which I traveled to. 'Cause nobody went to go talk to the workers. Nobody went to the actual place where the people who made the herbicides. You know, to me, I, uh... you know, my dad was in Vietnam, and, and those stories are important, and I wanna talk about that as well. But it also mattered to me, like, we need to go to the root of the story, the people who actually made these chemicals. What happened there at that plant? You know? So Monsanto was making it in '49. This chemical goes back to the '40s, wartime, you know, World War II in some ways. There were some experiments with it. Monsanto's doing it in '49. Um, 2,4,5-T, the active ingredient in Agent Orange, it's actually two chemicals in Agent Orange, 2,4-D, 2,4,5-T. Um, and about 50% of each of these compounds. And the problem was with 2,4,5-T, that chemical had a contaminant known as dioxin, which Dow Chemical writing to Monsanto in 1965 said, "This is the most toxic compound we've ever seen."

   8. JRJoe Rogan46:47

      Holy shit.

   9. BEBartow Elmore46:48

      '65. And you got those Vietnam War '66, '67, '68 ramping up, you know, and, and where the spraying is gonna be going on overseas. And that could be jarring in and of itself. But in the book, you'll see, I go back to '49 at the plant where they're producing 2,4,5-T, and these workers are all sorts of tore up. Like, chlo- they have chloracne, which, um, you can probably find it on, on Google, but, you know, what it looks like. But it's basically like where your skin is peeling off. It's just these massive pustules. It's acne-like lesions that are showing that you have systemic exposure to dioxin.

   10. JRJoe Rogan47:32

       Ugh.

   11. BEBartow Elmore47:33

       The workers had this. There's a guy in there, James Ray-

   12. JRJoe Rogan47:36

       You met these guys?

   13. BEBartow Elmore47:37

       Well, a lot of them were dead, um, and, or a lot of them weren't around by the time I did it, but I got, I got their files. As I say in the book, you know, they're, they're telling stories. They may not be here, but their records-

   14. JRJoe Rogan47:47

       Yeah.

   15. BEBartow Elmore47:47

       ... found in those corporate records still tell a story. And James Ray Boggs, I, I just will never forget this story, he talked about it in a deposition, 'cause he, he took Monsanto to trial. Um, in the eight... They took the- these workers years later in the '80s, took Monsanto to trial. Um, they lose that trial. And actually Monsanto puts, um, st- uh, I think liens out on their homes to make them pay the court costs-

   16. JRJoe Rogan48:15

       Ah.

   17. BEBartow Elmore48:15

       ... back, the workers themselves. But anyway, this is '49, f- in the '50s, right?

   18. JRJoe Rogan48:21

       Mm.

   19. BEBartow Elmore48:21

       So they've got chloracne on their faces. This, this is all being documented by the doctors and people in the, in the company, but... And, you know, he has to peel off his face. He literally said five times they, they used a solvent to try and peel off layers of his skin to... because of the a- of the chloracne exposure. They, they were s- They were complaining of nervousness and all these systemic health problems. Of course we now know dioxin is super toxic, and they even said it in '65, right?

   20. JRJoe Rogan48:46

       I need to see what this looks like.

   21. BEBartow Elmore48:48

       So-

   22. JRJoe Rogan48:48

       You got something?

   23. BEBartow Elmore48:50

       Yeah, chloracne. And this is, uh-

   24. JRJoe Rogan48:52

       Oh, Jesus. Like that guy who got poisoned-

   25. BEBartow Elmore48:54

       Exactly.

   26. JRJoe Rogan48:54

       ... in the Ukraine.

   27. BEBartow Elmore48:55

       Exactly. Um, and so you tell me. If you're seeing workers coming down with this, might you say, "Wait a minute. We might have a problem with our chemical." Right?

   28. JRJoe Rogan49:04

       Well, "You guys need to wash your face."

   29. BEBartow Elmore49:05

       You know? Well, in this case, you know, that's w- uh, kind of what they did. They said stuff.

   30. JRJoe Rogan49:10

       Uh, there we go.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:13:40

   Mm-hmm. Th- s- try…

   1. BEBartow Elmore1:00:00

      we've put it together. But when that weed resistance takes off, I think it's the next graph after that, what, what happens is... L- check this out. Okay, this is, this is what's happening. I put this together with a friend of mine who's a data scientist.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:12

      Mm-hmm. Th- s- try to, uh, remember that a lot of people are just listening.

   3. BEBartow Elmore1:00:16

      They're just listening.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:16

      Probably a huge percentage.

   5. BEBartow Elmore1:00:17

      Eh, sh- fair enough, so I'll try and describe it.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:19

      Okay.

   7. BEBartow Elmore1:00:19

      So what we're looking at is pounds of herbicide per acre of soybeans. So this is just looking at soybeans as a case study. And we're looking at the amount of herbicides that's being used on farms per acre in the US, in specific states just because they had data for this to, for us to compare. And what we're seeing is this like explosion in Roundup, glyphosate, that big dark line going up like that. And notice, look, th- we j- we started seeing the decline in all these other herbicides that are really toxic stuff, like chlorinated compounds and things like that. They're going down and down and down. But check out weed resistance, 2004, 2005, and 2006.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:01:00

      Mm.

   9. BEBartow Elmore1:01:00

      Boom, all those herbicides that were really toxic, including, by the way, the other half of Agent Orange, 2,4-D, is now being used to try and beat back Roundup-resistant weeds.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:01:13

       Wow.

   11. BEBartow Elmore1:01:14

       And so, last-

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:01:15

       What a fucking mess.

   13. BEBartow Elmore1:01:16

       It's crazy. Yeah, so like-

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:01:17

       Like if, if you... The folks who are looking at this graph, you're s- you're essentially seeing like two mountains superimposed, but one's upside down, so-... it starts out that everything's working great, and then it turns terrible. And then you have these, uh, her- herbicide resistant ... Uh, it's like the graph ... Uh, the, the ... Is, is it available online? So there's people who-

   15. BEBartow Elmore1:01:43

       Uh, I don't know if we have it available.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:01:44

       ... that are listening to this can see it?

   17. BEBartow Elmore1:01:44

       I'll try, I'll see if I can figure out a way to do that and, and do that. But it, it is in the book.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:01:47

       But to see this, it's like the clearest example ever that this is terrible policy.

   19. BEBartow Elmore1:01:50

       That it's broken, right?

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:01:51

       Yeah.

   21. BEBartow Elmore1:01:51

       And that's kind of what I was saying about looking back as a historian at 25 years of data and saying, wait a minute, like we were told that genetically engineered crops would reduce our dependence on all these toxic herbicides, but because of resistance, we're seeing all these toxic herbicides coming back. So if you're a c- consumer, and honestly it's not just so much about us and like caring about our food, but if you care at all about the p- people that produce your food, you know, and their exposure to, to compounds. I mean, we're, we're talking about some of these chemicals that are coming back, produced in the 40 ... You know, invented in the '40s-

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:02:25

       Mm-hmm.

   23. BEBartow Elmore1:02:25

       ... '50s. That's not good.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:02:28

       No. And we're also, because we're spraying these things, people have more exposure to glyphosate. So you're seeing whatever health problems that glyphosate causes. I'm sure you're seeing that exasperate.

   25. BEBartow Elmore1:02:42

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:02:42

       That, that's, that's e- expanding, right?

   27. BEBartow Elmore1:02:44

       Yeah. You know, on, on glyphosate. So here's where we're at with glyphosate and what, what's out there from all the, the different studies. So what happened in 2015 was the World Health Organization came out and said that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:03:00

       What year was that?

   29. BEBartow Elmore1:03:01

       This ... 2015.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:03:04

       2015.

Episode duration: 2:52:26