The Joe Rogan ExperienceJoe Rogan Experience #2062 - Will & Jenni Harris
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,054 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast.…
- JHJenni Harris
(drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.
- WHWill Harris
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music plays) There we go. Welcome back, Will. How are you, sir?
- WHWill Harris
Good. Thank you for having me.
- JRJoe Rogan
Good. Hey, please introduce the world to your daughter.
- WHWill Harris
Good. My middle daughter, uh, Jenny Harris, who is, uh, used to work for me but now I work for her.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- JHJenni Harris
Get used to it. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
That's gotta be interesting.
- JHJenni Harris
Well, we'll tell you about it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Please do. And you guys are the first people to ever bring dirt to the studio, so I wanna thank you for that. So-
- WHWill Harris
You're more than welcome.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) So here is, uh, your soil (door knocks) and, uh, compared to industrial, uh, commodity... What does this say?
- WHWill Harris
Dirt.
- JRJoe Rogan
Row crop. So you can see the difference in the d- I mean, I don't know if you guys can see it very clearly in the photogra- in the video, but one of 'em is very light colored and the other one looks rich and dark and it's filled with twigs and all sorts of biological material-
- JHJenni Harris
There's probably some worms in there.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Probably. And this looks like what I'd like to grow something on, whereas this looks like, uh, some stuff that, uh, blows in the wind when it gets dry out.
- JHJenni Harris
I'm gonna show you that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, please do.
- WHWill Harris
And, and they came from side by side, one side of the fence versus the other side of the fence.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- WHWill Harris
And there's no difference other than the way they've been managed over the last 20 years.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. And, uh, we've showed many times that video of the... Was it a creek or a river near your house?
- WHWill Harris
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Where the runoff from their farm is just polluting the water. I mean, a very clear line. I mean, the difference-
- JHJenni Harris
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... is so stark. It's so stark. And how is that legal, by the way?
- WHWill Harris
So let me tell you what you see in there. So the, uh, the brown water is coming off my farm. The red water is coming under the road. There's a culvert there.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- JHJenni Harris
There's, there's a video of that.
- 15:00 – 30:00
Re-box it. …
- WHWill Harris
if they grind it, slice it, cut it, package it, label it-
- JHJenni Harris
Re-box it.
- WHWill Harris
... transport it, but the animal, make- make no mistake, the animal was born, raised, and slaughtered in Uruguay, uh, Australia, New Zealand, or tw- or 20 other countries.
- JHJenni Harris
Lithuania.
- WHWill Harris
(laughs) Lithuania.
- JHJenni Harris
Croatia.
- JRJoe Rogan
The United States imports beef from places like Australia, Canada, and much of Latin America. It then runs that beef through USDA inspection, and if it passes, sticks a label on it that reads, "Product of the USA." How dare you?
- JHJenni Harris
But honestly-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's so dirty.
- JHJenni Harris
... the erosion of this type of farming in America, you know, is- is completely being exported to another country, because we're importing all of this product, and then due to loop- loopholes in labeling, intentionally fraudulent labeling even, uh, selling it as product of the USA.
- JRJoe Rogan
Then we have to consider, if everybody's really concerned about climate change and CO2 output, think about the amount of freight-
- JHJenni Harris
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... just these massive boats that are making their way across the st- Did you- did you see this thing they did recently? I was, uh, reading this, uh, uh, article, and I was actually listening to a podcast, that's what it was initially, but the podcast was, um, about how they changed, I guess it wa- I don't know what governing body changed the emission standards for these, uh, gigantic freight ship- ships, and when they changed the emission standards, what they found was when they were releasing less pollution into the air, it was doing less of a job of blocking the sun, so the ocean water was getting warmer quicker than they anticipated. So, it is having the opposite effect. So, they're trying to come up with different methods to mitigate that now, and some of the methods are spraying chemicals in the sky.
- JHJenni Harris
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
Some of the methods are spraying ocean water in the sky, which sounds much more natural, you know, just taking some sort of machine, but then again, what's powering that machine? How is that gonna work? What is- what are we doing? Instead of just growing it here.
- JHJenni Harris
(laughs) I mean, should we really be spraying sea water into the atmosphere? Do we really have to do that?
- JRJoe Rogan
No, but I mean, it's just water. That- that doesn't bother me. That seems like the most organic solution. You're gonna take sea water, blow it in, but who knows? I mean, think about all the pollution that's in the sea now and microplastics in the sea. Does that spray into the atmosphere and that get into people's lungs now and cause a host of new autoimmune issues and cardiovascular issue- Who- who knows? It's so crazy that we're doing it this way.
- WHWill Harris
So that- that label change, Product of the USA, even though it was imported, occurred in 2015, I think, '15 or '16, and it was a reaction to the fact that some of us had gone into the grass-fed beef business and were doing pretty good with it. We had some really good years in the early 2000s, and then of course, when they were allowed to bring the imported beef in as product of the USA, the- the margin structure fell dramatically.
- JRJoe Rogan
Of course.... dirty.
- JHJenni Harris
Dirty.
- JRJoe Rogan
Everything is dirty.
- JHJenni Harris
Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
When you get money involved and stuff like that, and decisions that affect everybody, someone always does something slimy.
- JHJenni Harris
Well, here, and here's the thing. I don't think either of us wanna debate product quality or the fact that it is from another country. You know, the issue that we have is that it's being sold under the guise of product of the USA.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. So if you're a person who wants to buy all American-made stuff and American-raised beef, and you're like, "Oh great, product of the USA. I feel like I'm doing a good thing."
- JHJenni Harris
Well, it's like the textile industry.
- JRJoe Rogan
Helping out farmers.
- JHJenni Harris
The textile industry has been exported. The automotive industry has been exported.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JHJenni Harris
But at least in those situations, it's pretty clear what you're getting. You look in the back of your shirt-
- 30:00 – 45:00
Mm. Pissing in your…
- WHWill Harris
soil to make it. Well, we got problems with water in the ground even in the Southeast, and certainly in the West. So this, all of these resources we're just using up and using up and u- it's pissing in your britches to stay warm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm. Pissing in your britches to stay warm is-
- JHJenni Harris
It's a good short-term strategy-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJenni Harris
... but long term?
- JRJoe Rogan
It's- (laughs)
- JHJenni Harris
Not what you want to do.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a great way to put it. I love it. I'm gonna use that one. Pissing in your britches to stay warm. (laughs) ... yeah, it's, uh, it's really sad. And it's, it's weird how we, uh, haven't addressed this, and how this is just something that just keeps going, and going primarily because of the amount of money that's involved, and the amount of money these companies are making by doing things the way they're doing it right now, and the fact that it's subsidized.
- WHWill Harris
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, it's, it's dirty business. And it's, uh ... There, um, there's an ancient soil in the Amazon called terra preta. Have you guys heard about this?
- JHJenni Harris
Well, I watched the Graham Hancock episode.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes, fascinating. So, uh, thousands and thousands of years ago, the, the indigenous people of the Amazon figured out a way to create this regenerative soil. And it i- it's, uh, it, it, it's composed of biological material, carbon, all sorts of different things. They don't exactly know how they made it, and they don't know how to recreate it, but this is a self-sustaining soil. And when you grow in it, it, it acts like this soil that you folks have. And these people that lived thousands of years ago figured out how to way, to make this sustainable soil. It just seems like that is something, if there's so much money involved in all this, that's something that someone would be able to figure out how to recreate today. This is the terra preta. This is the stuff that exists. So on the left, you see the actual soil, what it looks like before it's, before it's treated. That terra preta on the right is entirely manmade, and entirely manmade from an unknown origin. I mean, we know the folks, the people that live there, they're the ones who did it, but we don't know how they did it. And wh- what we do know is that you can grow on that indefinitely. You could just keep going. They, they're calling it biochar, terra preta, but it's a phenomenal soil for growing crops on and for growing things on. And it seems like that should be something that someone should invest in, some sort of research. I mean, look, if they figured out how to do it thousands of years ago, and we assume that they didn't have computers and AI and oh, all the different advantages that we have in terms of technology and knowledge, figure it out. Someone ... I mean, there should be some sort of a large-scale project if we're really 57 years left of topsoil in the American farmlands due to monocrop agriculture and industrial farming. It seems like they should be able to figure out a way to do that.
- WHWill Harris
Actually, that's our farm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- WHWill Harris
And then, uh, you can see there, but the subsoil with below that guy's hand, which is like the degraded soil.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- WHWill Harris
And the good soil, which is above it, which is w- uh, soil that we ha- we have built up.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- WHWill Harris
And, and it's, and it, and it was built up by using the natural systems. You know, we emulate the buffalo ranging over the, the, the, the continent. It's not as good. You know, we don't, we don't have from Canada to Mexico to play with.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- WHWill Harris
And we don't have hundreds of thousands of head. But it's a microcosm example of that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- WHWill Harris
And it works.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- JHJenni Harris
Denny, what was the story that you used to tell that scientists figured out exactly what seawater was, you know, like what, what made seawater, and they, they meticulously made it in a lab, but then somehow it wasn't, after they did everything that, that they, science told them that seawater was, when they made it, it wasn't seawater.
- WHWill Harris
That makes me question my ... You're right, that makes me question my, uh, reliance upon reductive science. The, uh, the, the project that she's talking about, I don't remember where it was done.
- JRJoe Rogan
Jamie, Jamie could probably find out.
- WHWill Harris
They took seawater and, and broke it down as well as they could with, uh, qualitative, quantitative chemistry, and decided if they could determine exactly what was in it. Then when they put it back together, a fish wouldn't live in it.
- JHJenni Harris
Oh, that was it?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Yeah. …
- WHWill Harris
animals.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- WHWill Harris
But I th- I, I, I... I'm, I'm... that's analogous with the food situation, I think.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that's what the whole Earth should be.
- JHJenni Harris
That's how it evolved.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- WHWill Harris
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it's just recently, within the last, like, how many years that we've done it this way?
- WHWill Harris
Since World War II. I, I, I b- I belie- I've thought about that a lot, read about it a lot. And I think World War II is kinda when we started the change.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because we needed food.
- WHWill Harris
Well, I, actually I should say the end of World War II. But, but yeah, we needed the food, so there was a demand to produce it. And then World War II's war effort gave us so many tools. You know, the, the munitions manufacturing became fertilizer manufacturing. The, uh, nerve gas became pesticides. On and on.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm. Phew. How do you unwind all that? That's what's crazy, you know? When you're dealing with 80-plus years of this going on, like, how do you unwind that, and how do you... I guess you do it through conversations like this initially, to get enough people aware of how big of a problem this is, and how bad it is for everybody.
- WHWill Harris
You know, th- three generations and trillions and trillions of dollars. There are just so many people making so much money on this.
- JHJenni Harris
Well, you think about it, you'll, you probably won't be here in 80 years. I know you're the specimen of health, and you're-
- WHWill Harris
Yes.
- JHJenni Harris
... uh, you know, may- maybe so. But your kids will be.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJenni Harris
And so, you know, I, I didn't really focus on it until I became a mother. And you have a son and a daughter, and, you know, my, my sister has kids. And it's like, all right, we can probably keep it in between the ditches. I'm 37. Maybe I'll, you know, make it to 75. So, we can, we can probably keep it in, in between the ditches until then. But, you know, what type of world are we leaving our kids? I mean, do you-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JHJenni Harris
... y- your kids, you know what I mean-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JHJenni Harris
... are, they're, they're gonna inherit something way the hell worse than you did.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. It's gonna get worse.
- JHJenni Harris
It's gonna-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's not gonna get better.
- JHJenni Harris
Way worse.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Unless enough people make this decision that you made. Unless enough people take control of their health and start changing the way they eat and where, and where they source their food from, and caring. And, you know, the, the title of your book, A Bold Return to Giving a Damn, which is a great title, One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food. Um, when you set out to write this book, I know that this is an important message to you, but how, how has this been received so far?
- WHWill Harris
You know, we don't get too much, uh, feedback on how many people are buying the book. That's... it's out there, but we don't get it. Jenny, you, you can answer that question better than me. She-
- JHJenni Harris
Uh, so, you know, when, when Dad started talking about writing a book, we were like, "Ugh. There's no way." You know, hi- his brain is, is truly cyclical, just like the farm. There's, you know, birth, growth, death, decay, birth, growth, death, decay. Where do you start? The chicken or the egg? Who came first? And for him, uh, you know, we had talked about him writing a book for a very long time. And honestly, nobody knew where to start. Um, and so he was approached by, um, you know, some folks who said, "Hey, we think, you know, you'd be a, a great book writer." Um, and Dad quickly told them, "There's no way I can write a book. No way in hell. I don't know where to start and where to end." And they said, "Well, let us help you." So, they found a ghostwriter named Emily Greeven, who is great. And she and Dad had phone dates every Friday for probably a year that lasted anywhere from two to four hours. And...In listening to the book, Dad nar- Dad narrated it, and it is like a glimpse inside of his brain. It is such a... Uh, all of his thoughts are there. And, you know, I think it's so important because, you know, Dad started a, a business and a mission that is gonna last a lot longer than him. You know, he's 69 this year and, you know, the food system is not going to be fixed, uh, you know, by the time he is gone. And so, to be part of that and to be part of a business that's, you know, bigger than one person, bigger than one person's life that lasts, you know, lasts so much longer, I think is so important. And, and people like him have got to focus on that. You know, he can't fix the food system. He has to set the groundwork for people like you and I to fix the food system, and then to instill it in our children to fix the food system.
- JRJoe Rogan
What was the motivation to write this?
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
Yeah. …
- JRJoe Rogan
and bullshit and preservatives and... I'm sure you've seen those, um, uh, they- they've done these, uh, little tests where they've taken a McDonald's cheeseburger and just sit it on a shelf-
- WHWill Harris
Yeah.
- JHJenni Harris
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... for, like, weeks and nothing happens to it.
- WHWill Harris
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You could probably eat it, which is so insane.
- JHJenni Harris
That's crazy.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, you could sit it for weeks.
- WHWill Harris
But, you know, these companies, as bad as this is, these companies have done what the public told them to do. The public has said, "We want food cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JHJenni Harris
Quicker.
- JRJoe Rogan
And chea-
- JVJamie Vernon
Yeah.
- JHJenni Harris
Consistent.
- WHWill Harris
... che- and quicker. And- and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- WHWill Harris
... you know- you know how you get cheaper and quicker.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay, this is exactly the same after five years.
- JHJenni Harris
Oh (laughs) .
- JRJoe Rogan
Five years.
- WHWill Harris
Wow.
- JHJenni Harris
Way to go, Jamie.
- JRJoe Rogan
That is wild.
- WHWill Harris
It doesn't look that bad.
- JHJenni Harris
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
That is crazy.
- JHJenni Harris
Stick a fork in me, I'm done.
- WHWill Harris
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.So, Megan wants to find out whether the cheeseburger will stay the same after another five years. (laughs) So, I bet it will.
- JHJenni Harris
(laughs)
- 1:15:00 – 1:22:53
Right. …
- JHJenni Harris
decisions, um, recently certainly, that when we get together, my- my wife, my sister, my brother-in-law, my dad, and he says, you know, "Do you wanna buy this land? I'll die before it's paid off. Is this something y'all wanna do?" And he abstains from the vote. And, you know, my sister, my wife, uh, my brother-in-law, we all decide if that's something we- we can or can't swing. And so, uh, businesses run like that for- for the longevity versus businesses for- for short-term profit-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JHJenni Harris
... uh, have completely different motivations.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, and, you know, we're seeing the health consequences of that with other things as well. I was watching this video the other day where this gentleman was talking about farm-raised salmon being one of the most toxic things that you can consume, which is so wild. If you think about salmon, salmon is just i- immediately associated with health. Like, "Oh, guy's eating salmon. Must care about his health."
- JHJenni Harris
Unless you're pregnant or meh. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, right, right, right. But people think about salmon as being one of the healthiest things. And so, this guy holds open this filet of salmon. See if you can find a video on it, Jamie. This guy takes this filet of salmon, and it's a fresh piece of salmon, and he opens it up. And he's like, "Look at how easily these- these bones separate-"
- JHJenni Harris
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
"... from the flesh." And the color of the flesh is very different, which is one of the reasons why they have to use dye. When you see a farm-raised salmon and it's a dark red color, a lot of times what you're getting is people putting food coloring on the salmon itself in order to make it that color. Which is cra- Because if you get a wild salmon, it's from the insects that they consume that turns their flesh that color.
- JHJenni Harris
It's crazy to me. Y- And when I listened to your episode with RFK, and he was talking about the mercury levels in fish-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJenni Harris
... I mean, I was not a huge fish eater to begin with, but after that, I was like, "Whoa."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- JHJenni Harris
"This is incredible."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, it's pretty wild.
- JHJenni Harris
It's pretty wild.
- JRJoe Rogan
But the farm-raised salmon thing is really crazy, because people just don't associate salmon at all with being something that's not good for you. And-
- JHJenni Harris
Or food.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- JHJenni Harris
I mean, why- why should consumers have to, you know, second-guess the- the- y- the nutritional density of food?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- WHWill Harris
You know, b- because I've been in the confinement animal business with cattle and other species, this thing about the fish doesn't surprise me a bit. I mean, it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- WHWill Harris
When you raise an animal as a monoculture-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- WHWill Harris
... uh, uh, there are going to be problems with it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- WHWill Harris
It's just as simple as that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- WHWill Harris
Just, you're going against nature.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you're pissing on your britches to try to stay warm. (laughs)
Episode duration: 2:02:19
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