#140: John Robbins - Ditching Gold for the Truth
Author, John Robbins
John Robbins is an absolute trailblazer whose story and mission really go beyond the kale.
Imagine being born into incredible wealth - private schools, country clubs, a 14,000 square foot home with multiple three-car garages, and family yachts at your fingertips. Now, imagine walking away from that extravagant life on purpose and with a purpose.
John Robbins followed the call of his conscience and walked away from the family business, the Baskin Robbins Ice Cream empire, and moved to a remote island seeking greater purpose and meaning in life. He knew he wanted to be in service to mother earth and the planet.
His first book, the 1987 Diet for a New America was truly groundbreaking and decades ahead of its time. It was and is one of the quintessential books that tie together the impact of foods on your health, your happiness, and the planet.
John has gone on to write nine books and, today, he shares stories about a few of those, including, The New Good Life- Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less. His life stories run the gamut of emotions from heartbreaking and joyful, to educational and inspirational.
John Robbins has chosen compassion over consumption at every turn and, after today’s episode, you’ll be more than inspired to do the same.
Episode Highlights
7:50 - John had polio as a child - how he adapted and 'muscled up' for vitality and strength
12:05 - John’s Baskin Robbins origin story - how he followed the call of his conscience
15:45 - John questions the link between the poor health of his family and the ice cream empire
20:00 - How a chance book recommendation from his father's cardiologist changed everything for John’s father’s health and their broken relationship
33:50 - Why he headed to a remote island with his wife to start fresh
44:30 - How Diet for a New America Launched the modern health food movement
49:59 - What happened when “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” wanted to interview John
1:00:00 - John’s Book - The New Good Life backstory and how John lost his own money in an investment nightmare
1:08:15 - Genesis of the Food Revolution Summit with Ocean and John Robbins - The Largest Gathering of Food Conscious People on the Planet
1:36:10 - Why and how John remains hopeful in these tumultuous times
Episode Resources
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Promo Music: Your Love by Atch
License: Creative Commons License - Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)
Full YouTube Transcript Coming Soon
John Robbins:
I would love to see our goal be unlimited compassion. Why don't we work to create a world where it's safe for people's hearts, safe for their love, safe for their joy, safe for their peace? That's the world where I think the human spirit would most thrive and who knows what problems we could then solve if we weren't wasting so much of our genius and our resources on stupid and shallow things?
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm Rip Esselstyn, and welcome to the PLANTSTRONG podcast. The mission at PLANTSTRONG is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant-based living and envision a world that universally understands, promotes and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment, and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with. We welcome you wherever you are on your PLANTSTRONG journey, and I hope that you enjoy this show.
Rip Esselstyn:
Hello, my PLANTSTRONG pickles. I'm Rip Esselstyn, and I want to thank you for joining me once again and on the PLANTSTRONG podcast. Today, I have an absolute trailblazer on the show whose story and mission really goes beyond the kale. I want you to imagine being born into incredible wealth, and I'm talking wealth beyond your wildest dreams, with private schools, country clubs, 15,000 square foot homes with three car garages and family yachts at your fingertips. Now, imagine walking away from all of that extravagance on purpose and with a purpose. John Robbins followed the call of his conscience and walked away from the Baskin-Robbins family ice cream business/empire, and moved to a remote island seeking greater purpose and meaning in his life. He knew he wanted to be in service to mother nature in the planet, and so he wrote and he wrote and he wrote.
Rip Esselstyn:
His first book, Diet for a New America, came out in 1987 and was groundbreaking and dare I say, was decades ahead of its time. It was, and is one of the quintessential books that ties together the impact that our foods have on our health, our happiness, and this planet. John has gone on to write nine more books. Today, he shares stories about a few of those, including one of my favorites, The New Good Life. His life stories run the gamut of emotions from heartbreaking and joyful to educational and inspirational. My PLANTSTRONG pickles, because you listen to this podcast, I know you want to prioritize health, kindness, purpose, and love. John Robbins has chosen compassion over consumption at every single turn. I know after today's episode, you'll be more than inspired to do the same. Enjoy. John, it is so good to see you again.
John Robbins:
Oh, it's good to see you, Rip, always.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. I think if I'm not mistaken, the last time I saw you was probably maybe when you came to Austin and you spoke at one of our, medical immersion programs with Whole Foods.
John Robbins:
It could be. It could be.
Rip Esselstyn:
Which was like 2012.
John Robbins:
Yeah. It could be. Although, I've been aware of you. I've been tracking you and I got to check out this out, Rip. I have heard...
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
John Robbins:
I think it's true, but it's amazing if it's true. It's incredible to me. It's hard for me to grasp. Yeah. Is it true that you, at the age of... What are you? 57?
Rip Esselstyn:
I just turned 59.
John Robbins:
Oh, that's worse. I mean, or better. Is it true that at this age, you have broken a world's record in the 55 to 59 age group swimming?
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, that's true. That's true. It's not like a world record for all ages, but for the...
John Robbins:
Oh, no.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. But for the 55 to 59 age group, I broke it when I was 56 in the 200-meter backstroke.
John Robbins:
200-meter back stroke?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
John Robbins:
That's epic. No doubt, in a year, the 60 to 64 age group record is going to be destroyed by one Rip Esselstyn.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's quite a commitment. Right?
John Robbins:
I know.
Rip Esselstyn:
The focus and the tenacity of working out regularly and just the amount of race pace efforts you have to do in practice, so your body knows when the gun goes off, how to do that.
John Robbins:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
John Robbins:
Oh, well, it's just so gratifying to me. First of all, I admire what you've done and I understand the focus and the persistence and the genetic ability, coupled with the dedication and work. It takes everything, but then also it's a statement because this is an age group record of how you're aging, and the way you're eating and the way you're living is supporting that level of performance in your chosen sport. It's mind boggling to me. It's just...
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, you know what else was mind boggling to me, was back in 2012, where in front of about 100 people, you challenged me to an arm wrestling contest. I think at the time, you must have been 62 or so. I was probably in my 40s, and you schooled me. You suddenly schooled me, and my right elbow was sore for about a month.
John Robbins:
I'm sorry.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, no. No. But anyway, way to go. Yes.
John Robbins:
I'm almost 75 now.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
John Robbins:
I can bench press my weight and a half, and I can bench press my weight 30 times. Those are just numbers to most be people. But in fact, that's pretty rare at my age. It's pretty rare at any age, really.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. No, that's impressive, especially considering... I was looking at some of your old videos when you were probably in your late 20s, early 30s.
John Robbins:
Yeah. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
After you had written Diet for New America, you were, you were it. Speaking to thousands of people, documentaries, and you were very thin. It is amazing how you have muscled up in your old age.
John Robbins:
Yeah. Yeah. I had polio as a child and was in a wheelchair for a while and I did get out of it, but my lower body has always had some problems. I did work at it a lot. That was my weak spot, so I wanted to... A lot of times, you're going to be undone by your weak spot, your achilles heel, so you got to put more energy into the place where the weakness is. For me, that was my legs. Actually, I did run marathons and I did do a couple of triathlons and it was harder for me than for most folks, but I did it. Then, at a certain point, my legs became... They were saying, "No. Don't do this anymore." The virus still is in me and I got to be careful. I said, "Well, okay. I'll work body then," because my polio situated in my spine in a particular place, so it was just my lower body.
John Robbins:
Some people get it higher in the spine and then you have serious lung problems and it can even go up higher. Then, it's death. The polio virus is not a good thing. You don't want it in your body, but I got it. I took a body building, weightlifting anyway, weight training practice, not really to compete or anything, but just to feel vitality, a good strength, to feel myself saying, "Screw you," to the aging process a little bit.
Rip Esselstyn:
It feels good.
John Robbins:
It feels good. It feels great.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah.
John Robbins:
The more you do it, the better you are at it. The more the muscles respond, the capillary systems grow into the muscles. I'm not that big, but when I work out, my muscles get much larger and people at the gym who know these things say the difference between the size of my muscles at rest and when they're being fully stressed is greater than what they normally see, even in people much larger and much stronger than me. I think that's the cardiovascular advantage that we have due to our diets. I really do.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right. Right. No, it's funny you mentioned lifting weights. I've recently started again too, because my son Cole who's 14 is getting into swimming and he wants to get stronger. We're going to the YMCA about two days a week and it feels so good to feel your body getting stronger again. I haven't lifted in 20 years.
John Robbins:
Yeah. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
I know that you and Ocean, I think go to the gym and lift together too.
John Robbins:
Yeah. Yeah. We always do it together twice a week, sometimes three times a week. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
So cool. So cool.
John Robbins:
Yeah. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, thank you so much for talking with me. I bet you, a lot of my audience doesn't know about your absolutely fascinating journey. I know that you've told parts of this 2,000 times, but I want you to tell it to the extent that it feels right as if you're telling it for the first time. Because for a lot of these people, they don't know your story and they don't know how you have literally spent your whole entire life, John, following the call of your conscience, right? Starting with you rebelling against the... Measuring yourself by your self-wort, not your net worth and basically telling your father, "Hey, dad. Sorry, I'm not going to go down this path." Then, to where you are today almost 50 something years later. Now, you are partnering with Ocean doing amazing work with the Food Revolution Network.
John Robbins:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
The dots have connected for you because I think you've been so true to yourself and what an amazing life. It's pretty darn unique and special, so I'd love for you to start wherever you want. Then, I'd love to go down this path in a way that's very organic and just feels right.
John Robbins:
Yeah. Okay. Well, for those of our viewers who don't know, and I apologize to those that you do for telling it again, but my dad and my uncle owned Baskin-Robbins, the ice cream company. My dad started the company himself. Then, a few years later, my uncle Burt Baskin married my dad's sister, became my uncle, joined my dad in the company. It grew and grew and grew and grew and grew, and it became the world's largest ice cream company. While I was a kid, it was a billion dollar company. I'm an only son. I have two sisters. I don't have brothers, and my father was quite old school. He believes or believed, I should say, he believed that men should work and provide for their families and women should not work. Kind of the old, I don't know how to explain that, but that's his generation, I guess. But the result of that was that the entire weight of his expectations was on me and...
Rip Esselstyn:
John, you mentioned you had sisters. Are your sisters younger or older than you?
John Robbins:
One older, one younger. Neither were given any opportunity to be part of Baskin-Robbins. If they got married, he would've been happy to offer their husband's jobs, but he didn't believe... Now, he had some employees who were female, of course, but he just had this belief that as of wealthy guy, and he was extremely wealthy that his daughters should never work. They should be taken care of. I think it's actually undermining of the strength of women to think that way. I think it's actually misogynous, but be that as it may, that's what he believed.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
John Robbins:
It was all on me. Rip, I loved it. I grew up, I invented flavors. I invented one called Jamoca Almond Fudge. That was one of the biggest selling flavors of all time. Nobody ever said anything about health and food. There was no connection in my family between those things. I didn't know there was. I was in Southern California. It was where I was living and it's hot there, and ice cream is even more attractive when it's hot out and the weather's hot. I ate a ton of it. I ate ice cream for breakfast. We had an ice cream cone chip swimming pool on our backyard. It's hard almost to explain to people how ridiculous it was.
Rip Esselstyn:
It sounds like something out of Willy Wonka.
John Robbins:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unlimited ice cream and no awareness at all that this could be unhealthy. The result was everybody in the family was fat and my dad had diabetes. My uncle Burt Baskin died of a heart attack at the age of 54.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's young.
John Robbins:
I'd say really young, and he'd had a series of heart attacks previously. Oh, he was a really big guy, way too much. When he died, I asked my father, "Do you think there could be a connection between the amount of ice cream?" He was really big and the amount of ice cream he would eat and his fatal heart attack. I didn't mean it in an accusative way. We're sharing grief here. My uncle, my dad's partner and brother-in-law has passed away. It's not a happy time, but I'm wanting to get value from the grief. I don't want the pain to be in vain. I want to get some learning growth out of it somehow.
John Robbins:
So I asked my dad, "Do you think there could be a connection between the amount that he would eat of ice cream and his fatal heart attack?" My father got upset and he looked at me very sternly, and he said, "Absolutely not. His ticker just got tired and stopped working." Those were the words he said, but the energy that he conveyed, his body language, the tone of voice, the look on his face, it all said, "Don't you ever bring that up again?" It was stern. Every family has sometimes taboo topics that they can't talk about. In my family, the fact that there might be any connection between ice cream with the family. By this time, my dad had manufactured and sold more ice cream than any human being who ever lived on planet earth.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
John Robbins:
He didn't want to think the family product was hurting anybody, much less it might have contributed to the death of his partner and brother-in-law.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
John Robbins:
But I felt like, "Okay. I get that he can't ask that question. I get that he can't consider that possibility," given who he is, given his identity and his income and everything. But I felt that the fact that he couldn't... Two things to me. One, I shouldn't ask him to, because it's like going to beat your head against the brick wall. It's just going to cause friction between us, but also I needed to ask, not him, but people who would really know. I started to consult with the medical literature and started to read. That was my original impulse is, "My uncle died. My family is deep, deep in ice cream business. What's going on here?" Interestingly enough, at some point in that journey, I came across your dad's remarkable research, early 80s, about heart disease and started reading that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. He started his research at the Cleveland Clinic in 1984. Dean Ornish was a little bit sooner about 1981, if I'm correct. Yeah.
John Robbins:
Well, the two of them were a one two punch for me because like... Oh, this is conclusive. I had already known I don't want to sell ice cream. If I'm going to sell a product or if that's my living, I want it to be something that's going to make people's lives better, not just provide momentary pleasure, immediate gratification. Ice cream does that. Of course, it does. We were good at it, but what the cost of that, and it's the long term implications of eating. An ice cream cone isn't going to kill anybody, but the more you eat, the more likely you are to have a heart attack, like it killed my uncle. The more likely you are to have diabetes, which my father developed extremely serious diabetes. It would've killed him. In fact, he had a very bad prognosis at one point, but what happened was his cardiologist had read Diet for a New America when it first came out.
Rip Esselstyn:
What kind of a cardiologist is that cutting edge?
John Robbins:
I don't know, but he did.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's pretty incredible.
John Robbins:
I know. I know. He was pretty good. He was a little more open-minded because this is before Kim Williams. This is before...
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, yeah.
John Robbins:
And before Dean Ornish and your dad and all that, but I guess he'd read some of... Oh, geez.
Rip Esselstyn:
Pritikin?
John Robbins:
Pritikin, yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
John Robbins:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. This fit with that and enlarged it, but he didn't realize... He knew who my father was obviously, but he didn't know that the John Robbins had written the book was the son of this guy. Not knowing, he says to my dad, "At this point, all we can do is juggle your medications and try to control some of the side effects, try to make your few remaining years a little more comfortable." Because my dad had really, really serious problems. That's what the cardiologist said. They said, "But if you're willing to make really big changes, if you're willing to really alter your lifestyle and what you eat, then there might be a different prognosis for you. There might be a different outcome."
John Robbins:
My father said, "Well, what do you mean? What do I have to do? What are you asking me here?" He said, "Well, I think the good start would be for you to read this book." He handed him a copy of Diet for New America, not knowing that this is his patient's son's book. He didn't know that. My dad did because I'd sent him an autograph copy when it first came out and he didn't read it. He was already pretty pissed to me.
Rip Esselstyn:
Still. Still pissed.
John Robbins:
Yeah. Yeah. He held grudges. But now, the high priest of western medicine, that's how my father viewed this guy, had blessed my book and he began to read it. He didn't tell me this was happening. I found out all about this two years later when he called me and said, "You won't believe it, Johnny. Something really incredible is happening. You won't believe it." I said, "What, dad?" He said, "Well, it turns out you were right." I said, "About what?" He said, "Well, two years ago, I read your book." He had made these little changes at first, but then he got results, so he had made more changes.
John Robbins:
He'd lost 45 pounds. He was off his blood pressure meds that they told him he'd have to take for the rest of his life, which had serious side effects that he hated. He had been needing insulin. Now, he didn't even need Metformin or any other diabetic pills. His diabetes had gone into remission completely. He'd lost a lot of weight that he needed to lose. Everything. His eyesight had improved. His circulation to his legs, which the diabetes had really caused problems to was... Everything was back working great, and he was thrilled.
John Robbins:
He said, "You wouldn't believe it. I just never would've believed it, but you and that Ornish fellow..." He didn't know about your dad yet, and he was like, "I just can't argue with you anymore. The results are the results." He lived another 20 really healthy years, Rip. During that time, there was a real reproach. Then, he forgave me for not fulfilling his desires relative to the company. He ended up having a lot of appreciation for what I did do with my life.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. That must have taken a lot for him to call you and say you were right.
John Robbins:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
What a gift that you gave him by basically your recommendation from him reading that allowed him to live another 20 years.
John Robbins:
Yeah. It's amazing. I had felt guilty. He was angry at me. There's a lot of things we didn't see eye to eye on, and that wasn't going to change. But I thought, "Where's the love? Where's the mutual respect?" That was kind of gone. He wanted what he wanted. He was used to getting what he wanted. He had 10,000 employees. Every one of them did exactly what he said when he said to do it. This is a guy was used to getting his way. Very controlling, very dominating man. When his only son rejected his life work in effect, not that I wanted had to make him feel rejected, but I made a decision for my conscience and I didn't know why I was on earth. I wanted to find out why. I knew it wasn't to make more ice cream and sell more ice cream.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, the quote in the book when you say that your dad told, "Maybe Johnny, what bothers me most about you is you can't be bought."
John Robbins:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Later, he called me into his office one day and he said, "Johnny, do you want to know what bothers me the most about you?" I remember thinking, "Sure. Why not?" Of all the things, how you start a conversation with your son. But I thought, "Well, okay. He wants to tell me what's bugging him. I'll listen." Then, he said... It was not intended as a compliment, although I took it as one. He said, "Everybody else I've ever known has their price, except you. You can't be bought and it pisses me off."
John Robbins:
I said, "Well dad, I actually can. I'm actually pretty cheap. It's just I'm measured in a different coin." This whole idea, the commercialism of our culture that's taken over and made people feel... I think it's a disgrace how the inequality of wealth that we have, the degree of it. It's not right and it's not healthy, and it's not good for anybody, and the pursuit of wealth for its own sake. Te measurement of who we are as people, that we feel bad about ourselves and ashamed if our income isn't to a certain level. I just find that degrading to us as human beings.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, there's a Gandhi quote that you have in your book. There's enough for everyone's need, but not everyone's greed in the new good life, which I tell you I just gobbled that up. That was so awesome. I obviously want to talk about that. Let me ask you this, John. I'm just fascinated. Did you grow up... Were you in private schools?
John Robbins:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Then, you went away to college and what I found amazing is that you went away to college, but did you put yourself through college?
John Robbins:
I did. I did.
Rip Esselstyn:
I think washing dishes and playing poker. Is that right?
John Robbins:
Yeah, exactly. And bridge. Yeah. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Incredible. You didn't even ask your parents to pay for your college education?
John Robbins:
They wanted to. I wouldn't let them. Here's the deal. I did go to private schools and my parents did belong to very expensive country clubs. They were very rich. Not originally, but as I got older.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, you had a yacht that was called The 32nd Flavor.
John Robbins:
My dad had a yacht. I didn't.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Okay. There you go.
John Robbins:
All my parents' friends were rich. I mean, really rich. They were among the richest people in Southern California and in the world. I didn't agree with my dad's politics at all. I didn't feel good with this conspicuous consumption that I was around all the time. At the country clubs, for example, they were all white country clubs in those days. I knew that, and it just felt wrong to me. Particularly so because there were a lot of black people around at the country club. They were all staff. You have all the white people being waited on and entitled, and you have all the people of color serving. I saw the contempt and the disrespect from the wealthy entitled ones towards the people who were working on their behalf.
John Robbins:
It just rubbed me really the wrong way. I just said, "I don't want to be around these people. I don't want to be like them." I felt actually trapped. This is hard for some maybe to understand, but I felt confined and restricted in this world of wealth. It's all I knew. I'd grown up with it and I wasn't comfortable outside it because it's all I knew. Everything else was unknown to me. We get scared of what we don't know. I was a debate champion in high school, and I was offered scholarships to Harvard and Yale and Princeton and Stanford, all the prestigious private schools.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
John Robbins:
I remember thinking, "Why did they give me a scholarship? My parents could pay for this in a heartbeat," and they would. They valued education. But I thought if I go to one of those schools, I'll probably get to find education, but I'll be around either privileged white rich kids, or a few kids who are on scholarships, but more of the establishment power structure. These are kids born to elitism and they don't even know how privileged they are.
John Robbins:
I chose to go to UC Berkeley. I grew up in Southern California and Berkeley's in Northern California, but the state. In those days, if you were a resident of the state and I was, and if you had the grades, which I did, you could get in and it was almost free. The tuition was very low. It isn't anymore and that's too bad, but that's what it was then and I was able... I said, "I figured out if I washed dishes 20 hours a week and lived in the cheap dorm and didn't have a car, I could make it on my own," and I did. I really wanted to do that, Rip. I wanted to find out who I was, not just the spoiled rich kid. I was a spoiled rich kid. I didn't like being that, but that's what I was.
Rip Esselstyn:
Obviously, you enjoyed thriving in this environment where you didn't have things handed to you and you had to work for it?
John Robbins:
Exactly. Welcome to the human race. This isn't something special. It's just normal, but for me, it was an act of rebellion really, because my dad wanted to pay for everything and he could. It wouldn't have hurt him in any way. It was not like any sacrifice for him, but I still didn't... I wanted to be my own person. This is what it took for me. It seems a little extreme to some folks. But for me, it was really, and still is really important, honestly, to never forget. When I sit to down to a meal and say grace, and take a moment just to relax and center and the gratitude I feel to have this food. I'm also thinking about the farm workers. I'm thinking about the guys or the women that drove the trucks, the people that dug the wells. All the people whose in labor in the process of food production made it possible.
John Robbins:
The companies that are risking their investments, and are investing in healthy food, but there's some risk in that for them financially. Everyone who's involved is making sacrifices and undertaking efforts. I'm the recipient of this food and I get to eat it. Yeah. I paid for it, but I don't want to forget the people. I just don't and it's really important to me that my grace, the grace I say, the grace our family says includes everybody whose work, whose sweat, whose effort has made this possible.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. It's beautiful.
John Robbins:
I feel more connected to life.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. It's a beautiful thing.
John Robbins:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, where did you meet your wife who is then such a pillar in your life?
John Robbins:
Oh, yeah. Did you ever met her?
Rip Esselstyn:
I did. I met her at one of the Earth Save events with the Nelson's.
John Robbins:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes.
John Robbins:
Well, we've been together 55... Married for 55 years. We met in Berkeley in the '60s where I had chosen to go rather than the private schools. She's been the greatest blessing. You can imagine. When she met me, I was still the heir parent, and her parents were... I guess you could call them lower middle class. Her dad was a school teacher. He'd worked real hard to become a school teacher. They were pretty intimidated by my parents' money, and they didn't exactly like me. I was such a rebel. They were very conformist people, but the one thing that they liked about me was that I was rich. I came from this family, that their daughter would be well cared, whatever that is. Then, I go ahead and make the decision I make, and they were not happy about it all. But my wife, Deo, she was with me 100.0%. She didn't waver ever.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
John Robbins:
She knew before I made the decision, that that's who I was and that's who she loved and that's who she want and that she had... A lot of women that were basically choosing poverty over an inheritance would probably be in the billions.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
John Robbins:
Just bless her heart. She just was with me completely.
Rip Esselstyn:
I just find it incredible that then you guys went and you bought a couple of the lakers and an island. I think it was called Salt Spring Island. Right?
John Robbins:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Then, you were there for a decade, built your own little cabin, grew your own food, spent $500 a year. That is...
John Robbins:
Yeah. The first five years, no money.
Rip Esselstyn:
Incredible, John. Absolutely incredible. The lessons that you must have learned, the simplicity of life, living in one room, I can't even imagine it.
John Robbins:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's all we could afford to build. It was a one room log cabin and it was simple and it was rudimentary in some respects. It was cold because I grew up in Southern California. I didn't really understand Canadian winters, but this Salt Spring Island is in BC, British Columbia. Those were wonderful years. We did a lot of yoga. We did a lot of meditation. We did a lot of inner work. We did a lot of soul searching and reflection and mentally, a lot of therapy to try to find out who we really are. As distinct from who our culture says we are, or our parents say we are, or... Who are we here to be? In other words, what is the purpose of this life?
Rip Esselstyn:
Where do you think you found the courage and the introspection to go down that path? That's not an easy path.
John Robbins:
No, it wasn't easy. It was far from easy. I like that part of it. Just like with swimming, you got to get in the pool. You may not feel like it. You may be cold, but if you're going to train at the level that you're training, oh my God, the dedication, the discipline, the perseverance, the persistent is got to be... Difficult things are sometimes the most rewarding things. That's one of the things about money. When people have too much, and I would say my parents had too much because it becomes more important than relationships with people. It becomes more important than anything else, and it makes you lazy because you get used to just other people, you pay them. They do everything for you.
John Robbins:
I don't want to come across as overly judgmental. I know I can be, but it was painful for me as a child to see my parents living this way and treating people this way and the lack of love in my family. I think that that was a real provocation for me to be as extreme as we were, because I felt that the pursuit of wealth for its own sake was a force, a grief force in our society that was out of hand, was given way too much reward, and was the form of ecocide. It would kill the world. It pollute. It would devour. It was a predatory.
John Robbins:
I wanted to be a pilgrim on this planet, not a predator. I didn't want to be part of the kill the world game and make a lot of money doing it. My dad did that. He provided a lot momentary pleasure for people with this product, for sure, but it undermined people's health and it undermined their mental capabilities. We know, and my mother died of dementia, Rip. My mother got dementia quite young. She went blind from macular degeneration.
Rip Esselstyn:
Was she supportive of your father eating the way...
John Robbins:
She was worse than him. She wouldn't change. When his doctors told him, "If you want to live, you got to change your ways." He said, "I do want to live. I'll change, even though it's Johnny," ya know...
Rip Esselstyn:
What a cruel trick the universe is playing.
John Robbins:
Yes. Considered it a form of justice, but... Okay. Karmic. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall in the room when he met with that doctor and seen the look on his face when the doctor handed in my book, because it was a karmic collision, a jarring of worldviews. Here is a doctor that he has eminent respect for. Frankly, he's putting his life in this guy's hands, is telling him he should respect and listen to the voice of his maverick son who rejected his life work. It's intense. I really honor my dad that he was able... Despite his identity with ice cream, which was total, that he was able to make these changes and he did get much... He did it without my mother's support.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
John Robbins:
For example, he'd get up in the morning and she'd have the staff, make bacon and eggs. He'd say, "The doctor said that'll kill me. Could you just ask him to make oatmeal? In the pecking order there, she dealt with that staff there, and he didn't. But he wouldn't speak to them directly, so he would ask her to ask them, she would refuse. Her way of doing that was to say, and this is painful for me, but it was the case. She would say, "Well, you tried to be too good for us now? You think you're like Johnny?" When I went to visit them, she would have the food served to be just what they always ate. I wouldn't eat it. I didn't eat the steaks and all that.
John Robbins:
I tried to make it easier for her. I said, "Look, I'll just go in the kitchen. I'll make tofu, or I'll make something for ourself. If you'd like, I'll make some for everybody else if you'd like some, but if not, I'll just make it for Deo and I," or eventually Deo and Ocean and I, our son and she said, "Well, you will not cook tofu in my kitchen." That's a quote. I was like, "Okay. I'm not allowed in the kitchen," but it shows an attitude. It was painful for me, and it was harder for my dad and he did it anyway. That's the thing.
John Robbins:
At breakfast, she wouldn't have the staff and he didn't know his way around the kitchen at all. He didn't know how to prepare anything, so he'd go out. He'd just get in his car, go out to a restaurant where he'd get oatmeal and orange juice and stewed prunes. It didn't bother him in the slightest and he stayed with it and bless his heart. At one point, he said, "I'm not a card-carrying vegetarian," which is a phrase that reminds me of McCarthy talking about card-carrying communists.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
John Robbins:
But he said, "I don't eat meat anymore. I don't eat ice cream anymore. All right. Okay. If I'm at a fundraiser and they serve what they serve, I'll have it. But other than that, I don't want to be a bother. Other than that... I'm almost like you, Johnny." He said that with a sense of respect, and appreciation. It made my day. I never expected my dad to change as much as he did. We had a lot of reproach, and there was a lot of love in the end between us. I really appreciate it. I inherited some characteristics from him and qualities that I appreciate, and I'm grateful for that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
John Robbins:
He's a manifester.
Rip Esselstyn:
Tell me this, when you decided to hatch Diet for New America, ere you living on Salt Spring Island or did you move from there?
John Robbins:
We had just moved. We had lived on Salt Spring for 10 years. Then, Ocean had reached the age of five and he needed more kids. We were very isolated on the island. We lived in a remote corner of it, and there weren't any other children in the vicinity. We moved to a town on a bigger island, the bigger island being Vancouver Island, the town being Victoria, which is the capital of DC. It's a town. It's a city, small city. We lived there for five years. Then, when he was 10, we moved to California. That's when I wrote Diet for New America.
Rip Esselstyn:
You spent two and a half years writing that book?
John Robbins:
Yeah. Yeah, I did.
Rip Esselstyn:
Like 40 to 60 hours a week you spend on that book?
John Robbins:
I did, Rip. This is before the age of the computer. I had a typewriter. I couldn't afford an electric typewriter. I wanted one, but I did it on the old-fashioned typewriter where... It was ironic because we had no money. Deo was cleaning houses and also selling water filters, but most of the income came while I was writing the book. I have had a body work practice before that. I had learned a form of deep tissue work and working my hands with people's...
Rip Esselstyn:
Like Rolfing? Is it like Rolfing?
John Robbins:
Yeah. I actually trained in Rolfing among other techniques. Yeah. Ida Rolf developed this form called structural integration, but there's a lot of different forms of hands on work that help people feel freer in their bodies and more connected to their bodies. I did that and that's how I made our living until I stopped to write the book. I couldn't do both at the same time and Deo started cleaning houses then. I think for about three and a half years, she ran Shiny Bright House Cleang Service.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. Incredible.
John Robbins:
We got by.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you know how many copies has Diet for New America sold? Is it like over two million?
John Robbins:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah.
John Robbins:
Yeah. It's in 30 something languages.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. It is phenomenal. Really, that book launched the modern health food movement. It literally did. It was like the linchpin of the zeitgeist that made this all happen because I think you, for the first time, connected all the dots as far as, "Well, this is the best way to eat for health and the environment and if you really want to be compassionate for the animals." It was such a...
John Robbins:
Yeah. And the world peace, and to address world hunger issues. Right now, we have this terrible event happening in Ukraine and it's terrifying actually and heartbreaking. One of the aspects of it that people aren't too aware of, there's lots that people... The brutality that it's... But Russia and Ukraine have been responsible for a significant percentage of the world's wheat and fertilizer, and some of the world's largest wheat importers have dependent on Ukraine and Russia for their sources of wheat. Egypt gets 85% of its wheat from those two countries, for example. Needless to say, there's no wheat being grown in Ukraine today. What would've been wheat fields are battlefields and the people who would've been harvesting the wheat and working in the fields are either in the front lines or they're hiding in basements or they're homeless.
John Robbins:
The country's not capable of its normal agriculture, and Russia is producing wheat. They're growing wheat, but there's way of getting wheat to the world, to export it to the world is through the Black Sea and the sanctions have closed that off. Basically, Ukrainian and Russian wheat, which has been a mainstay of the world's wheat consumption are out of commission. We're already seeing food prices going up, but we're going to see that more and more, I'm afraid. For people in the Western Europe or people in the United States who can afford it, it's going to be annoying and inconvenient because prices are going to go up. But for people in a lot of other countries, and for some people in the United States and Western Europe, this is not just going to be an inconvenience and an annoyance.
John Robbins:
It's going to be something far more serious. We've had a problem with world hunger for years, and we've been making inroads. We've been reducing slowly the number of hungry and starving people on earth, but that curve that we've been bending in the right direction slowly, unfortunately, but we've been bending it in the right direction is suddenly going to bend in the wrong direction. That's a tragedy, and it's one of the many tragedies ensuing from what Putin's doing, but here's the thing. When you eat lower on the food chain, you're actually consuming less food by far because all the grain and the fields and the water and the energy and what it takes to produce meat to feed these animals in the feedlots is so egregious that your ecological footprint, when you eat low on the food chain, when you eat a plant-based diet is so much lower. It's so much less.
John Robbins:
Therefore, that allows those fields to be used to grow food for people. We could feed everybody on earth, a healthy plant-based diet. I mean, lots of vegetables, lots of foods, and do it at a cost effective way and use a quarter of the land we now use. Then, those other three quarters of the land that we now use for meat production could be rewilded, could be reforested, could be put into wind farms. There's a million things they could do with them that would fight global warming, that would increase the beauty on earth and start to restore the habitat for species that we've been eviscerating. There's so many good things that can happen, and even this crisis.
John Robbins:
I wish it didn't take this, but what's going on in Ukraine, it's terrifying. But it's yet another moment that could be a teaching moment for us, a learning moment for us. We could say, "Well, we don't need Russia's gas and oil," if we go into non-polluting... Seriously, into wind and solar and so forth. We don't need to all this extra food if we stop feeding our grain to animals that are being treated so horribly, so people whose cholesterol levels are already too high can have hamburgers that are quarters and cheaper.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, everything you just said is exactly why we do need a food revolution and why the work that you and Ocean are doing is absolutely so, so important. I want to get to that, but before I do, there's something that I read that I just adored. I tried to look it up to find it and I couldn't, and that is when Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with Robin Leach came knocking on your door and we're like, "Really? This is the place we're supposed to be filming?" You tried with all your might to tell this woman, "No, I'm not interested. I don't want to do it," but she talked you into it and it ended up being a really spectacular experience.
John Robbins:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. I'll tell you what happened this day. I get a phone call one day, we're living in this... We're not on the island anymore, but we're still living very... We didn't have any money, Rip, so we lived very simply, but they don't know this at Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. They assume otherwise. For some reason, they call me and say they want to do a segment on me. I say, "You must have the wrong John Robbins. I'm the opposite of everything that you're about. You guys exalt conspicuous consumption. You glorify the shallowest parts of people. You're an embarrassment as a show. I wish you didn't exist. Thanks for the call," but she was nonplussed, believe it or not.
John Robbins:
She said, "Okay. I know. I know. You're right. You're right." She says, "But once a year, we're allowed to do a different kind of show and a bunch of us here on the staff have read your book and we think it's great and we want to publicize it, help get your message out to some people who otherwise would maybe not ever hear it. Our audience is that." She said, "We are allowed to do a different kind of show once a year. That's the show we have in mind for you." I said, "Well, what is it? Because I know what your usual show is. There's no show of that nature for you in my life." She said, "Well, we're allowed to do a show about rich people who are using their money for good things."
John Robbins:
I said, "Well, that's good. I'm delighted that you do that once a year. I wish you did that every show. Once a year, you did your stupid show, but still, I have to tell you I'm not rich. I'm really, really, really not rich. That may surprise you, but it's the truth." She said, "Well, we love your book. You could have been rich." I said, "Yeah. Lifestyles could have been rich and famous." That's like, "Who is it..." But she just won me over. I told her the truth. I explained where we were living. It didn't deter her, so I agreed. Then, on the appointed time and day, this van shows up. It's a huge van, and the gaudiest possible script on the side of it, it's Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
John Robbins:
The cameraman knocks on the door and I answer, and I say hi. He says, "Excuse..." First words out of his mouth is, "Excuse me, we have the wrong place. We're looking..." The address is right there, right next to the door. He says, "We're looking for..." And he tells me our address. It's right there. He can't miss it. It's right by the door. I said, "Well, this is..." Whatever the address was. He said, "Well, we must have the wrong address then. We're looking for John Robbins Do you happen to know where he lives?"
John Robbins:
I said, "I'm John Robbins. This is where I live. Come in. We're expecting you. Welcome." He just stands there at the door and he looks in, because I opened the door to let him in. He says, "This is where you live?" I said, "Yes. You're welcome. I've been thinking if you don't want to do it, don't do it, but I make time." He says, "Well, I'm sorry. Excuse me. It wasn't what we expected. This is nothing like the shit places we usually go." I said, "I know." I'm thinking, "Where's the woman that told me about this is the different kind of show and everything. Where's she?" Because she wasn't with them. But he said, "Well, yeah. It is a different kind of show. I'm not sure. I just do the camera work. I don't know anything."
John Robbins:
The people come and I'm assured that it's going to be a better show than their usual thing. The funny thing is they did a lovely thing. They went to Earth Save and interviewed some of the people there. They actually had me on their show quoting throw where he said I make myself rich by making my wants few, a love maybe statement. On that show of all shows, and at the very end of the segment on me, they show... This is so beautiful. They show the photograph of the whole earth from space. This gorgeous globe, brilliant. I don't know if you know, but the earth is more perfectly spherical, geometrically speaking than a billiard ball and more smooth, even with Mount Everest.
John Robbins:
It is that. It's a geometric marvel and a a cosmic marvel. There it is from space, the whole world and Robin Leach of all people says, "This man's life goes to show that he who believes, he who dies with the most toys wins, doesn't see the whole picture." There's the picture of the whole earth. I thought, "They did it. They did what she said they would do." It was in with some other people who were rich people who were doing good things with their money. I thought, "If we have reached... This is a weird place to reach. This is not the leading edge of consciousness of any kind in any way." But even there, there was an openness to a more life affirming message than this usual crap that they did, and I felt pretty happy about it and I was glad I did it.
John Robbins:
The interesting thing was when it came time, they, they were there for a couple days, the crew. When they left, the cameraman who first knocked on the door, took me aside and said, "We've never been to anything like this before." I said, "I gather." At lunchtime, Deo had made lunch for everybody and he said, "That's the first time that's ever happened to us. We go to mansions and there's plenty of staff and we go out for lunch, but no one's ever offered us lunch before." I said, "Well, I'm sorry that you've been made to feel that you didn't get that degree of hospitality, but I'm glad you did here. We sure enjoyed having you."
John Robbins:
He said, "The food is new to me, but you've reached my heart and I'm going to tell everybody I know about this." It's this feeling of... It almost makes me cry. I just feel so grateful and humbled to be part of spreading a message that you are too, Rip, so beautifully, and have been and your dad, your family for so long. that can help people so much. What a privilege we have? I had another privilege in my early life, the standards, financial privilege. I got to tell you, there is no comparison. This is the real thing. This is what makes my heart sing. This is what makes me want to give thanks to life.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, I have some quotes that are in your book that really touched me. One of them is Albert Schweitzer that's the Nobel Peace Prize winner that said, "The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve."
John Robbins:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
That, to me...
John Robbins:
One of my favorite quotes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah.
John Robbins:
Yeah. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's exactly what you just said. Exactly what you said.
John Robbins:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Not everyone gets that. A lot of people have to work for a living doing things that aren't life giving to them and they may even hate and that deplete them, drain them. I want us to restructure our society if I had my way, which I don't, but I'd like to see us and that's where the wealth inequality issue strikes me is because way too much money is concentrating at the top, and that everybody pays a price for that. I don't know where our compassion is, but we better find it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep. Well, I think you say in the book that our society needs to regain its soul.
John Robbins:
Yeah. And we have this ethic of the goal is unlimited consumption. I would love to see our goal be unlimited compassion. You know, why don't we work to create a world where it's safe for people's hearts, save for their love, save for their their, their their joy, save for their, their peace? You know that that's the world where I think the human spirit would most most thrive and who knows what problems we could then solve. If we weren't wasting our so much of our genius and our resources? On stupid and shallow things? Yep,
Rip Esselstyn
I think I think you're right. I think it would be limited
Rip Esselstyn
Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're okay with it, I'd love to ask you a little bit about "The New Good Life.” Because to me what you've done there, in “Diet for new America” - And they both have the word “new,” maybe that's very intentional. But you know, so “Diet for new America,” you kind of are trying to teach people a new way of looking at your food choices, right. And the way that people or the vast majority people are doing it, it's just, it's perverse, it's unhealthy. And it is killing us on the planet. And with “The new Good Life,” to me, you've taken another subject that's almost as powerful as food, if not more, so, which is money. And you're trying to get us to look at money in a whole new sense and lens. That again, to me, is not perverse, but is it's a very healthy relationship with money. So I'd love to talk about that. But I think it's imperative that, if you don't mind, you talk about what happened to you, and basically losing all the wealth that you had accumulated. Right? Yeah. Going down your true path. Yeah. Because of a crappy decision that somebody that you trusted made. And you, unfortunately, were the bearer of that financial ruin.
John Robbins
Yeah. Well, so “Diet for a New America,” sold millions of copies, and I became a thing. And I did a lot of lectures around, I was touring for about 10 years. And I regularly had 2000 -3000 people at my events. And it was, and we and part of that was we made some money. And it wasn't our goal, but it came with the territory. And I was grateful for it. Absolutely. And I was a successful author, you know, and speaker. And then in 2001, our son had and married his wife, and we were all the four of us were living together,
Rip Esselstyn
That in and of itself in America is kind of unusual. I know. I know. And so I mean, and I think it's so awesome. That you guys did that. And are you stil doing that?
John Robbins
we doing that? Well, no, we close, close. Yeah, I was, you know, that's 10 minutes away. And but his family outgrew this property, and we, you know, got it. And I think he wanted even when I'll do on his parents property anymore, his parents house anymore. I think he had some, but but but we would have kept him. I mean, it was no, and, but we were living together and, and his wife got pregnant and then she gave birth to extremely premature twins, extremely premature. And that's not a good thing. so they are now 21. They're autistic. And I don't just mean on the spectrum, they are autistic there. They've had some severe handicaps and challenges. And it became really clear right away, that these kids are gonna need a lot of help. And there's two of them. So it was a really good thing to do when I was there. Because this is more than 2 parents can handle two special needs babies, and there was a lot of life or death incidents that occurred when they were young, seizures, all kinds of things. And a friend of mine who was on the Earth Save Board of Directors at the time and very wealthy attorney, who did pro bono work for Earth Save at the time. said to me, your your, you know, he met the kids. And he said, you know, there is going to take a lot of money, childcare and all kinds of support services. And it's, and I said, “Yeah,” and he said, “I have an investment.” And he's a very wealthy guy. He's a very heart-centered guy, and he is very much a part of his Earth Saves growth. He did a lot of pro bono work for Earth Save, I think I said and he did, and it's very appreciated. He said, If you mortgage your property to the max, I can take that money and invest it and you'll be paying. I think in those days, I think our mortgage was I may have not right, exactly. But I think it was five or 6% That Sounds about right. Yeah. And I think he said we could get a purse sent from him. So there's a little different on margin of 2%, which would be income. And he said, I've been doing this for 35 years, and no one has ever lost a penny with me. And I said, “Well, what is the investment? “And he said, it's pretty hard to explain. It has to do with arbitrage and indices. And I thought it was so sophisticated is over my head. And it turned out, we didn't know this at the time. But in 2008, December 11, I think of 2008, he called me and said, “I have bad news. And he said, Madoff’s been arrested.” And I said, “who's Madoff?” Yeah, I wasn't, I had never heard that name before. And he said, Well, that's where all our money has been invested. And what does this mean? He says, it's gone. And we had mortgaged our property to the hilt and all of our savings. And it was stupid. You know, there's this old saying, Don't put all your eggs in one basket. But I borrowed eggs to put in that basket. I mean, we mortgaged our property to the max and I trusted him, and it was a mistake, and we lost all our money. And now we have this huge mortgage. And because our property was mortgaged to the max and, and Rip, the most amazing thing happened… this dear friend, Patty Brightman, you may know, do you know Patty?
Rip Esselstyn:
I don't I don't think I do.
Well, she's a longtime vegan activist, her and a lovely woman. And she'd been a book agent in New York, and been an agent for one of my books. That's how I'd met her. And she asked me if she could. She said, there's a lot of people that would like to help you, John, if they knew. Would you please allow me to tell them? I was very ashamed and embarrassed. But I felt where she was coming from, and it was really good place. And I said, Okay. And she then did, she put the word out about what had happened to us and a lot of people sent money, or some wealthy people gave us some significant loans. You know
Rip Esselstyn
what it sounds just like, it sounds just like the what's the one would Jimmy Stewart the Christmas one? Yeah. You know what I'm talking about?
John Robbins
Yeah, I do. I do that famous movie. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn
But, anyway, yeah, he loses the money. And everybody comes and they save the day for him. Anyway, is that kind of what happened?
John Robbins
It was. It was kind of what happened. And although, you know, it helped. We still had the boys though the twins and their needs. And
Rip Esselstyn
it's a wonderful life. It's a Wonderful Life.
John Robbins
Yeah, yeah. But I was I'm still humbled by that by the generosity that came our way and love, the love. And so then, Ocean, who had been running a nonprofit organization for 20 years, called “Yes,” called, yes, Youth for Environmental Sanity, it was a project of Earth Save, and he was doing great work. Decided to go into the for profit world, kind of, and start the Food Revolution network. And he and I did since that day, that was in 2012 that we basically got you 2010- the idea first came, and, you know, took a little while to get started and so we're doing our 11th annual Food Revolution Network Summit in a week or so starts on the 23rd and the email I mean, the link has just gone up the internet link FoodRevolutionsummit.org If you want to know about it, and we've been doing this for all these years and and and your dad's been a guest on it, you've been a guest on it. A lot of generations, many guests people we've already mentioned a lot of the main spokespeople for a whole food plant-based diet had been on it and my delight to interview these folks and get their message out to a growing audience. We have 800,000 members. Now, we for the last four or five years, all of our summits have had about least 300 or 350,000 participants. It is at this point in time the largest gathering of food-conscious people on the planet. And it's, it's now the venue that we're using an ocean basically took the thing I did in writing a book and in lecture turning and lecture onto the internet. Took it global in that way and it is global. We have partners servants from 180 countries we have it's it's a, it's growing and happening. And I owe a lot to him for that he's amazing. And the remarkable that you alluded to this earlier is that my dad wanted so badly for his son to follow in his footsteps and do his, his business with him. He wanted me to become the CEO of Baskin Robbins, he wanted me to inherited and you know, he got the one kid that said, No, I felt bad about it. He, you know, most kids, he wasn't selling plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons. You know, he's selling ice cream. Most people think of that as a happy thing. But he didn't get that he got maybe I gave him a bigger gift in the long run. Yeah, that additional 20 years. But the fact that Ocean chose, it wasn't my idea. So Ocean’s idea to work with me, I would have never asked that of him. Never expected of him. But he, I don't know, I imagine your dad feels similarly about you. The sense that you've chosen to align yourself with and further is where
Rip Esselstyn
Well, you know, but yeah, it's a beautiful thing. And obviously, it's such an important cause that we're all you know, joining hands and trying to further but I look at, you know, you and Ocean and my father and myself and my sister Jane and my mother, and you look at the Campbell's right and all the yep, yep. Yep. The whole thing the whole Campbell family, Nelsons. Yep. And Furman and his children and I mean, it just you know it. I think that as children to people like yourself, and my father and Colin Campbell and everybody, you can't help but be drawn into this, this sphere of truth, and the importance that it has right now for this civilization. So but it was but so so appropriate that you and Ocean have each other and have this gift that you're now giving to the world that started with what you know what you did? God? Long time ago?
John Robbins
Yeah, I wrote DNA in the mid a mid-80s. Yeah,
Rip Esselstyn
yeah. Yeah. So the “New Good Life.” I just love for you to talk a little bit more about like, finding, you know, this new freedom, a new truth, a new joy and how it especially since we've become such a consumeristic you know, country, it's just, we've come
John Robbins
We've commercialized everything. Yeah. I so I had this unique journey. I was born into wealth. As I grew up, it became great wealth. I went from there to chosen. You know, there's this old phrase rags to riches. I was born into riches, went into chosen rags, if you will, and then earned riches not the kind of money my parents had nearly but but but well off -decent. We were we felt secure. And then to unchosen rags, because of the theft that Madoff was, and people hear about made off and yes, most of his clients, if that's even the right word victims were were wealthy people, but not everybody was and we, we weren't living high on the hog and we weren't getting I heard the people getting exorbitant interest rates.
I don't know anything about that we got 8% And in those days than the years that we were invested, which is Oh 1208 The stock market was going up more than a percent every year. So it didn't feel like this is extravagant or disproportionate in some way didn't didn't wasn't a red flag to me. Maybe it should have been that I wasn't and and so now we're at we're at unchosen rags because we were in trouble. And then through food revolution network and working with ocean working our way slowly back to I don't know if riches is the right word, but security. Yeah. And it's been a quite the roller coaster. And for me, and I think I've learned things through experiencing life through these different lenses from these different perspectives. And one of the things I've learned is that a poverty sucks, party totally sucks if you do The only people that don't know that are the ultra rich, and who've never known it. And the second thing is, we make too much money too important. And that's one of the reasons why poverty sucks, is so we don't invest in things that are community based. We don't invest in public health we don't invest in, and parks and, and subsidizing healthy food and contributing to the health of our people, all our people, we privatize things and then only the rich can afford this or that, and everybody else is just fucking left to sorry, not just left left in a place they shouldn't be left and and and it's disgraceful. And what do we do that that's the system, we want to change it if we can, or but you know, it's a pretty big system. So what can we do, one of the things we can do as the shame, we take the shame out of poverty, we can take the shame out of out of, of having less than the riches, the lifestyles of the rich and famous. And, and we can start to say what really, because I think that belief system, that you are as wealthy as you have money, that your net worth is your self worth deeply impoverished, as us as people. I think it's a it's a tragedy to our hearts and our relationships. And that's something we can change, we can change. And we can learn to to live richly with less possessions. And that's something you won't learn from commercial culture, because everybody's trying to sell you something. And the idea of buying less, and living on less beautifully graciously, I would even say exuberantly you learned to appreciate things like going for walks, and, and how I, you know, I wish we had more parks, and we're putting people in cities have more places where they could walk, they'd be more safe, and be beautiful in my life giving. But I'll find the parks, I'll look for the places the joys of being under the stars at night, that's free, you do have to be away from city lights to see him. Yeah. And, and, and there's, there's a corollary to that the joy of living a healthy life being a healthy body. Because you've prioritized healthy food. I mean, it's hard to explain to someone who's never had that experience, how great it feels. And it's an it's a it's an inner richness and and when you have it, when you have that sense of vitality, within your own self. You're not as as as susceptible to the Luers and the predations of commercial culture, they want, they want your money, they don't care about what it does to you, they don't care if what they give you or provide for you, is of value to you. Or to life. They don't. And that's a shame. But when you learn to be happy with last year, a little bit throw in, you know, it takes some of the sting, it takes the sting out of being not having more, and it also does open you up to the the beauties and joys that are commercialized that don't require money, you don't buy them, you avail yourself of them, you create them. So you could I mean, some people can sing. You don't have to have money to sing. I have a terrible voice and I sing. Keep it. I think mostly ALLAH and with my wife, she puts up with me, she she's great. But I'm nobody would pay for me saying they pay to leave room. I started to sing, but I like it. I love it. And, you know, if I'm not gonna if I'm not inflicting it on somebody else.
Rip Esselstyn
Well, you know, I, I've never gone to the extreme that you have, as far as simplifying, simplifying your life. But I feel like I've I've done a pretty good job with it. Right? And like, just to like, open up with you about this. Like, I've never been driven by money. It's never been the thing that's motivated me in any decision that I've, that I've made. Like, for example, after graduating from college, University of Texas, everybody was telling me how you got to get a real job and I was like, I like to compete. I'm gonna do triathlons. And I was dirt poor I was living. I was living with this really, really nice woman who rented out a bedroom and a bathroom in her house and I was paying $150 a month. Right, which is pretty cheap. This is 1991 to 1997 Right? Got it. And then after doing that for a decade, that's when I was like, Okay, I'm done galavanting around doing the triathlons. So then I decided that I would become a firefighter. I was and I was making 22,000 right now as a cadet my first year out, and, and then when I bought my first house, it was an 800 square foot home. And we live in it until 2014, with three kids, two dogs, guests, one bathroom, and we were never as happy. Right. And that's where I am right now, where I'm talking to you is this that we've turned this into, basically the plant strong world headquarters. But, and I also like you adore nature, right? There's nothing I love more than being out mountain biking, hiking, going to the national parks. That is where I really like feel so alive and truly happy to my core. So everything that you're writing about in the new good life, I've never owned a new car, right? I always buy used cars drive until they drop dead. I only buy things that I can afford, you know, this house, we paid it off as fast as we could. And just it just Where where are your priorities? And is it driving around a shiny car, you're paying $800 a month, it just makes it seems so wrong. You know. So anyway, this so resonated with me. And just the way you know, diet for new America resonated with me. And I just I want people out there that are wandering, you know, that are that are struggling with their, their finances with happiness, to take a look at this because to me, it will totally level set you as far as and what you talked about in the book, John is financial freedom is really it's the new frugality. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's a really wonderful point.
John Robbins
Yeah, yeah. And I thank you for telling me that your personal story, you know, and I think you made a choice for, for, for the richness of your life. Yeah. Versus the bank account kind of richness. And, again, I always say this always need to balance it with we were nobody is glorifying poverty here. There's nothing fun about not being able to feed your family or being able to house yourself. And, and, but there was also nothing fun about not being able to say enough. And be it food, you know, the people who eat can't say, Enough, I'm done. I've had enough, you know, I end up paying a pretty big price for that, that that appetite. And similarly, with with material goods, if, if you can't say enough at a certain point, and know what that is for you, where your comfort zone is, then your then your commercial culture will just eat you up. And when you were able to say I'm okay, we're living in 100 square foot place, and we're gonna raise our kids here with our dogs and and we're going to be happy here. And it's, you know, there's something about actually the proximity. Oh, that's good. I mean, it's, it's challenging at times. It's challenging, for sure. Unless you guys are saints. But no, we, but But you know, I grew up in, in, in, in mansions where there's all these unused rooms, unused wings. My parents at one point, the just the two of them live on long after I'd left and our kids who lived in a 14,000 square foot home that had three three car garages and had 42 televisions. Two people Yeah, yeah. So I mean, for me, the pendulum swung real hard in the other direction. I don't necessarily I don't I don't ever recommend what we did you know, the level of we took it, but I'm an extreme guy. And if I if I had the physical capacity, I would run the triathlons and swim like I could have met Oh, my God, the joy of that I
Rip Esselstyn
Yeah. Well, you just said your your home had 42 televisions or something like that. You know, in the news. You talk about turn off the TV and turn on life. And I love that and what screens to me are Doing to, to the youth and to adults, because it's so addicting. It's like, you gotta you gotta figure out a way to, like, either throw it out or limited limited.
John Robbins
You got, you got to have some bright lines. Yeah, I like around food, I have some bread lines, I will never eat anything from a factory farm ever, under any circumstances period. Now, if my life was at stake, and I was starving, and that was all there was a available, I don't know. But absent that, that I'm never going to eat anything from a factory farm. When I travel, I lower my standards just a little bit because I very pristine at home. But but not to that extent anyone that ever eat anything from a factory farm Period, end of story, and have that bright line. And it's for me, it's consistent with it's an expression of my ethics and values. And frankly, my compassion and caring for the world and for people and for animals. Yeah, so that's me, I think we need to have bright lines around our use of screens. And no, I'm not suggesting that everybody, you know, go on a do away with them that that's not practical. But we get addicted. And there's something about the technology that reinforces the worst parts of us. And you know what they say they used to say what bleeds leads, meaning the headlines would be about scandals and blood yet warm. Now, I think the same would be what what enraged is engages. They want engagement, they want you to pass on retweet, they want your eyeballs, they want you to read those stay on the page. So they can sell you stuff. They want you to see they want you hooked. And they do that by making you enraged or disgusted. Because those are the emotions that people will. I think sometimes we have. It's in our nature, if we sense danger. Something is disgusting, or horrible or frightening or dangerous. We want to tell everybody warn everybody about it. That's just part of how we evolved as people. Now we're inundated with horrifying and disgusting and enraging input all the time. And we want to tell everybody, because that's our nature. So then that leads to this this extra engagement online. And in the social media, I call it the anti social media for the most part, because it's not building relationships. It's actually harming them in a lot of cases. So I think we need bright lines I need we need to whatever yours or mine or someone else's, we got to find our own. Where but but for me, I mean, I just have to turn off the computer, walk away from it get outside. Yeah, for me, it's get outside. Because honestly, I'm indoors. The attraction is stronger as soon as I get outside. Yeah. As soon as I start moving. Soon as I start breathing more. The natural world saves.
Rip Esselstyn
Yes, yes. You know, another thing you talk about in the new good life that I put to practice last night with my family is we love having dinners together. It's sacred time. We love going around and asking each other you know, how was your day tell us something that was great. Or tell us something that made you sad, just something right to get everybody talking? And you you talked about a game called two truths and a lie. And I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna try this. So I did it, you know, and let's see, there were four of us. My son wasn't there. And so two of them got it, which I was telling a lie to him that it but it was so cool to see each one. My two daughters and my wife, try and come up with three stories and just the exercise and my wife is such a bad liar that she told the truth. And she was telling him I'm like, Hey, all sound really good. But I'm like, Okay, it's the time you're on a Ferris wheel and somebody vomited on your head and, but it was real, right. And then I had one daughter, her two truths and a lie. It took literally 10 minutes to tell. I'm on Sophie. But it was a blast. It was a blast. I encourage everybody to try it.
John Robbins
And I'll tell you another practice around dinner tables. It's that doesn't take quite as long. Yeah, it's called Ocean invented this actually. It's called um Ubud a thorn and and a rose. And each person takes the time to share a thorn, which is something that's bothering them or something that happened that day that was difficult for them or challenging about Ubud something they're hoping for aspiring for working towards a goal they have in their life for themselves or something like that. And the flower, something that happened today that they loved something that they enjoyed something that enriched enrich their experience of life, and that was inspiring to them. And even little kids can play this, they, you know, have to have a certain verbal skill, but, and you get to know each other, you share your, there's an old saying that among among friends and family, joys that are shared are doubled and sorrows that are shared are haft. And in that spirit, the sharing of of the thorn or the difficulty, whatever the challenge is also connecting, because, you know, you know what other people are dealing with. And then and then you might not have known otherwise. And you know, what they're what they're liking and what they're what they're, you know, what they're aspiring towards or wanting. And it's, it's, there's this sense of everybody knows everybody with a little bit better for those few minutes and a centering. And everyone gets to speak. And even, you know, the people who are less verbal that maybe the children are the people who are Shire, get their full turn. And it's, it's I St. Grace, finding ways to celebrate our, our connection with each other and with life. To me, that's the richness. When we do that we don't need the fancy car, brand new car shiny card, the cost is 800 a month, you know?
Rip Esselstyn
No, no, those are those, those are the golden moments like what we had last night at dinner, that, to me is more important than any thing that money can buy. Absolutely, that's literally golden moments that I live for. And something you just said about, you know, sharing, sharing with, whether it's your family or friends, when you're having a hard time when you're going when you're in pain, and your suffering. To me that also is a very powerful way to create more powerful binds.
John Robbins
Yeah, it really is. Yeah. And when we, when we know, the weight that others are carrying it, it just automatically creates compassion for them. And in our society, we a lot of times were ashamed of our difficulties and our problems, and we don't talk about them, particularly as guys. I mean, our training is men. You know, we don't talk about our feelings, we help other people we provide we were strong and silent. And we get ulcers and cancer and we kill ourselves inside. Because we don't, we don't know that the people know us. That's the training. Maybe you don't maybe you have your own version of it, I have had to deal with that a lot. And to be able to talk about my challenges without feeling ashamed of them. Or were self pitying is to do it with respect and dignity is has been a real growth place for me to learn how to do that. And I don't pretend to have a down but I'm, that's one of my my buds. That's why things I'm working on. Yeah, to be
Rip Esselstyn
me. That's one of the things to me that in reading your all your books is so spectacular about you is the way you kind of open yourself up and you make yourself vulnerable and you tell us about you know, all the travails you've gone through right, just as a human being and you know, I mean, the struggles with your father and with, you know, with money and trying to who who am I and what am I? All I mean, what am I? But it's awesome. It's awesome.
John Robbins
Thank you. Yep. And, you know, it's human, it's young. And I just want to thank you because you have been such a beacon. You know, I met you at Whole Foods, and John Mackey took a liking to you and engine to foods emerged out of that, but then Amazon bought Whole Foods. And as I understand it, you're kind of on your own now with it's
Rip Esselstyn
right. That's right. And we've pivoted, we've pivoted now and it's no longer engine to engine to as it was great. It's the genesis of it all, you know, was the firehouse. But the reality is, it's a little bit muddy and ambiguous. So the new brand is plant-strong, which you also yes, you you and I very much have I really that really resonated with us as a good put forward for kind of the movement in the brain.
I love the phrase. Absolutely love it. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn
So we have the new food line now is is plant strong not not to. And that's what all of our all of our events, all of our, our online coaching all of our retreats, it's plant strong. So yeah, I like it. I like it.
John Robbins
Yeah. Well, here's to the success of the plant strong brand. And here's to, to plant strong life. And to all of our our listeners and viewers. Here's the made up plant straw, you know, man?
Rip Esselstyn
Yes, yeah. And here's to the food revolution, right? And all the all that just fantastic stuff that you and Ocean are doing. Well, before we go, John, given where we are right now in 2022? And it seems like there's a lot of reason for us to not be hopeful.
John Robbins
Yes. Why are you hopeful? Because for me hope is, is is a state of mind, not an anticipation of what's going to happen. It doesn't depend on optimism, it doesn't depend on Oh, things are going to be rosy, or therefore I'm hopeful. Hope is a choice. For me, that I make, regardless of what I think the outcome, how things are headed. It's because it's empowering, I can respond I can act. And I So fear is the expectation that things are going to get worse. And in that sense, hope is the expectation that things are going to get better the typical meaning of the word. But but for me, the meaning of the word is more about self. Empowerment and self taught and autonomy and the right to choose your own attitude in the face of freedom is what you do is what's done to you freedom is what you choose. And, and so even when things are going really badly, to choose hope to for me isn't a to deny, and go into unconsciousness around the trends and developments that are so frightening. It's to choose a local, a response that's that's empowered to those events. And it's always possible, regardless of what is happening. We have choice we can about the attitude we bring to that event. And some events are so awful and painful, that we may take a while to find our choice. But if we live with a sense of, of respect and reverence for life, that's inclusive of the sorrows and the, you know, the thorns and the difficulties and challenges. Then, when they come. We're not shocked. We're not stabilized. We're challenged. But we're but but we can connect with each other. And it's that sense that we can do this together. That I that I'm afraid might be being lost today in the internet world and social media and other events. As one of the reason I appreciate this connection with you so much. And if we can find the togetherness that they are not being kumbaya here, but just we're so much more powerful when we work together. And when we're on the same team, one of the things when when Dale and I have difficulties, sometimes I'll just say same team. Just same team, nice. Were you know, let's do this, like we're on the same team. And she gets it since she says it to me because I get upset and she says same team. Yeah, it's and it's that choice to work together. And find our better natures, find our strengths. And feed them, feed them with the food we eat, feed them with with the things we read are and don't read the things that that drain your capacity to respond. Don't don't embody it don't don't don't inflict on upon you foods or experiences or people who are toxic to your capacity to love and to grow and to do what you're on this earth to do whatever that might be. And let some of us have big bigger karma. You know, destiny than others. It doesn't matter. Whatever you're left with. Everyone has a destiny. Everyone has a purpose. Everyone has loved Give and relationships to, to nurture. And that's what I that's where I find hope. Yeah, we do that.
Rip Esselstyn
Well that I love that answer you are you are really brilliantly articulate and what a what a gift that you have John, let me say in closing that how much I love the values that you espouse. I love the message that you're delivering. I love the example that you set every day. And we would not be where we are today without you a long time ago, having the courage to find your true self. And thank you for that.
John Robbins
Well, thank you, Rob, and thank you for all you're doing to carry it on you and your whole family. And it's a blessing to know you.
Rip Esselstyn
Right back at you. Hey, hit me with a little plant strong lovin.
John Robbins
All right, buddy. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn
Food Revolution. summit.org is the website to register for John and ocean Robbins eight day, Food Revolution Summit. Make food the foundation for your health and find deeper meaning and more purpose in your life. We'll make sure that all the links are in the show notes at plant strong podcast.com We'll see you next week. And until then, keep it plant strong. The plant strong podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin, and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous truth seekers who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth. Most notably, my parents, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. and Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening
