00:04:43.500So when I started walking, it was big news.
00:04:47.560It's just John Francis has given up riding in cars and not riding in a car in California.
00:04:54.780It's kind of stepping out on the edge of society.
00:04:59.180So when I did that, I soon found myself arguing with my friends and my neighbors about whether one person could make a difference in doing something like that.
00:05:11.620I realized I'd been arguing so much that I decided on my 27th birthday that I was just going to not speak for one day.
00:05:21.520And that not speaking, I learned that I hadn't been listening.
00:05:25.380and because I hadn't been listening I decided I discovered actually that I hadn't been learning
00:05:32.240I had given up learning because anything that I heard that was new or different than what I
00:05:38.660already believed I just would refuse to hear it I would start thinking about something to say back
00:05:46.160to the person telling me what they thought or what they felt and I was just not listening to
00:05:53.080I was thinking what I was going to say back to them and how I was going to defend what I believe.
00:05:58.940And so realizing I had stopped learning, I decided that I might do this not speaking for another day.
00:06:09.220And it turned out a week later that I decided maybe I should do it for a month.
00:06:14.240And then a month later, I was like, maybe I should do this for a year.
00:06:19.120And every year on my birthday, I would reassess the not speaking.
00:06:38.460And as you say, I eventually walked across the whole United States and studied at different universities in different states,
00:06:46.640at University of Oregon, Southern Oregon University, and it was Southern Oregon State
00:06:55.020College, I think, when I first went there, but they changed. And then I returned after graduating
00:07:01.720from Southern Oregon University to the Bay Area, and I treated myself with an apprentice
00:07:10.780at a boat building with a boat builder, wooden boat building was one of my dreams is to build
00:07:16.520a wooden boat and sail around the world. Well, at least I got to the part about building the boat
00:07:22.040and learning how to build a boat. So I learned how to build a boat. And instead of sailing around
00:07:27.740the world, I took off walking. And my hope was to walk as part of my education and the spirit and
00:07:37.020hope that I could benefit the world by what I learned. And I didn't know what that meant,
00:07:41.700But I figured I would learn that along the way, and I continued walking across the United States, leaving California in 1983, and then taking seven years to walk across the United States to my native home of Philadelphia and to my adopted home in Cape May, New Jersey, where I live now with my family.
00:08:09.860Along the way, I stopped and went to school until I had received a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, and was fortunate enough to be named a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador to the world's grassroots community and was hired by the U.S. Coast Guard to help write oil pollution regulations after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.
00:08:38.740I did sail to the Caribbean and walk the length of South America.
00:08:43.760And now I am a commissioner here in West Cape May.
00:08:48.180And I am running for the United States Congress in District 2.
00:12:09.300And so from that not speaking, silence came.
00:12:12.760And silence came in a way that I don't even know if I recognized it right away, that that was silence. It was something that when I wasn't silent, even when I wasn't speaking, you're not necessarily silent, even when you're not speaking.
00:12:32.860So because something is going on and it takes your mind from wherever you what you're doing, you have to pay attention to something. But at some point, I would wonder, oh, my gosh, where have I been? Because I would realize that I was not in the world that I'm usually in. I was somewhere else or I was with something else.
00:12:57.740And that's what I think silence is, and that's what grows from that not speaking is that silence.
00:13:06.140Now, from that place of silence comes the opportunity to be with, I want to say with creation, with everything.
00:13:18.720And it's like, what can everything tell you?
00:13:22.080What can we learn from listening and feeling all that is being communicated to us?
00:14:04.140And what else is beckoning at us that we can't hear?
00:14:07.800And I'm thinking about how our anthropocentric understanding of language really limits us.
00:14:13.160And I wonder how we can cultivate nonverbal communication by choosing conscious silence and not just nonverbal communication, but also communicating with our more than human kin and experimenting with silence.
00:14:27.200What other forms of communication and earthly rhythms arise?
00:14:31.760My first realization about communicating with our non-human family was when I tended beehives for a woman who lived on a mesa in Point Reyes.
00:14:46.180She asked me, because I walked around and people got to know, to see me, and Frances Blair was her name.
00:14:54.540She asked me one day, she says, John, would you tend bees?
00:14:58.620Because it seemed like something I would do.
00:15:01.760And it's so funny because I always wanted to attend bees.
00:15:13.480And I don't know if any of you or how many of your listeners know about setting up a beehive and you order the bees, they come in the mail.
00:15:23.240And so we had about, oh, I think maybe 40 hives.
00:15:27.840and so we had to first prepare the hives and that was like getting all the wooden frames and the
00:15:34.460foundations and so where the bees are going to live and then we ordered the bees from
00:15:40.120a bee distributor i'm not sure where they were where they came from but they came in the mail
00:15:45.680a queen and some worker bees and they were in a little package each hive had a queen and each
00:15:54.700little package had some worker bees and females and drones and worker bees are females and then
00:16:02.040there's the drones which are the males and they're all kind of maybe 50 bees in a little package and
00:16:07.700that's one hive and we had 40 of those but they came in the u.s mail and they were down at the
00:16:14.380post office in point ray station we had to go down and get them somebody had gone down and gotten
00:16:19.680them. And Frances has gotten a message to me that the bees were in her yard under a grape arbor
00:16:26.200and that I should come and begin setting up the hives. Well, I'd been reading about bees and
00:16:32.920reading about them because I had never ever set up a hive before. So I kind of knew after
00:16:39.320reading these instructions. And I went to the bees. I was still afraid. And as I approached
00:16:45.740the bees they're all in the shade underneath this tarp they just let out a horrendous hum
00:16:55.900it was angry they were angry and I was like oh gosh and I backed up and they kind of calmed down
00:17:05.640and I went oh god I'm so afraid I just don't know if he's going to sting me how am I going to let
00:17:10.460them out. And I went up to the bees again. Same thing happened. Huge hum came down there. I sensed
00:17:17.800that they were really angry. And then I realized that it was really me that was afraid, that I was
00:17:24.280afraid of the bees. And somehow they sensed that. So I said to myself, look, the bees are all in
00:17:31.860these little cages. Now I'm going to go up there and I'm just not going to be afraid because what
00:17:37.980can they do? They can't do anything. So I calmed myself and I walked up to the bees and there was
00:17:44.700nothing. I backed up again. I said, that can't be true. I said, if I'm afraid, the bees are going to
00:17:51.580know that. I let myself work myself up to be afraid again. I walked up to the bees and the
00:17:57.420angry home started again. Just to realize that there was this connection that I had with these
00:18:05.420animals, these bees, and how I felt. And I calmed myself down again. And I just said,
00:18:11.500I'm just going to have to be calm. I'm just going to have to be calm and work with the bees. And
00:18:16.220that was a really amazing thing because I felt that the bees probably sensed, or maybe they
00:18:23.180smelled the pheromones that we give off when we are anxious or angry or afraid. And those
00:18:32.140infinitesimal little bits of molecules that the bees can smell that we're not really aware of
00:18:39.560because our smell isn't that great. And most of us, maybe some of us have that smell,
00:18:44.860that ability to smell. But anyway, the bees were the first animals that I worked with that I
00:18:52.360realized that they could tell how I felt and they responded to how I felt. And I'm sure beekeepers
00:19:00.500know that. People who are around other animals know that animals do respond to the way that we
00:19:08.500feel. Our non-human cousins and brothers and sisters do respond to how we feel. The amazing
00:19:17.180thing about that is that what I discovered is that that's how we are. We're all like that.
00:19:24.320Maybe we do feel each other's pheromones or electronic or electric auras or whatever it is that we all feel something from each other because we are those kinds of beings.
00:19:41.380I think that's what came out of the silence, which connected me to everything.
00:19:46.680I definitely get that sense as well with our more than human relatives. And I strangely have
00:19:56.800a very good sense of smell, but I don't think it's as good as the bees. But I've been able to
00:20:02.720work on my olfactory power magic skills lately. But yeah, thank you for sharing that. That was
00:20:09.940such a beautiful experience that you shared and it made me really want to get out with bees.
00:20:15.200And I'm actually setting up a beehive now, so this was really perfect timing. And I want to bring up something you mentioned, I think, in your first response. And it reminded me that in silence, we learn to listen rather than waiting for our turn to speak, which I truly believe is a skill that so few of us have played with or really even bothered to consider how it might shape our lives.
00:20:39.660And I wonder if you can share both sides, the pleasure of being listened to and the pleasure of listening.
00:20:45.300And how might this be a skill that can especially aid us during troubling times?
00:20:52.140I have lots of stories about listening.
00:20:54.740And of course, I mean, I lived in Point Reyes and Inverness for maybe for about 10 years off and on before I started walking across the United States.
00:21:05.540And so people got used to the fact that I didn't speak.
00:21:08.900And one of the things that my friends and my neighbors would do is that they would come to me to just talk to me about something that maybe they felt they couldn't talk to anyone else about because they felt that I would listen to them, which I would.
00:21:25.040This was my practice and not have to respond, not have to say, oh, that's really, yeah, that's, or that's crazy.
00:21:53.880Well, just that someone would care or believe or feel that they could tell me anything that they couldn't tell or they felt uncomfortably sharing with someone else.
00:22:10.160That made me feel needed in some way, that what I was doing was worthwhile, that my silence was worthwhile.
00:22:17.200I had friends come to me about dreams that they had.
00:22:20.680John, I had a dream about you, and we were sitting on my roof, and we were looking out, and they said, you said something. You were talking to me about this, something, and I would want to know what I said. I'd draw a question mark in the air, and they'd look at me, and they'd go, oh, what did you say? Oh, I don't know what you said, but you were talking.
00:22:41.560that's what was amazing and that would always make me wonder that if i had anything to say i
00:22:49.480guess i didn't have anything important to say yet or that it didn't matter what i said that it was
00:22:56.180that i was just speaking and i thought about that that's an experience that i've taken with me that
00:23:01.540sometimes it's just enough that we're speaking to each other that it's not so important what
00:23:08.080we're saying, but that we are together and that we're just kind of speaking with each other. And
00:23:14.960I think that is like maybe the social being that we are, that we love this company and we love this
00:23:21.560ability to talk about the weather. And when I did start speaking, I wondered, well, what was I going
00:23:27.120to say? Was I going to only say important things? What I thought was important? Maybe I was only
00:23:35.700going to sing? And I thought, God, no, that'd be terrible because I just couldn't sing at all.
00:23:41.020I'm just going to talk about the weather or whatever it is. And so when I did start speaking,
00:23:47.200once I learned how to speak again, because I had to practice speaking, I was going to speak about
00:23:53.340whatever. I was not going to just say important things. I did start speaking on Earth Day because
00:23:59.720I wanted to remind myself that one of the things I would speak about and one of the most
00:24:05.360important things I would be speaking about was going to be environment. And because environment
00:24:12.620for me was why I started walking, why I had stopped speaking, all those things. And now that I was
00:24:21.600coming out of the silence, I wanted to speak about environment because the biggest discovery to me
00:24:29.600was that because we're all part of the environment, how we treat each other is like our first chance,
00:24:38.980our first opportunity to treat the environment in a sustainable way or even understand what we mean
00:24:47.520by sustainability. Environment was, oh yeah, it's about pollution. It's about climate change. It's
00:24:54.800about loss of species and habitat and all those things. Yes, yes, yes, it's about that. But it's
00:25:01.560also about human rights and civil rights and gender equality and economic equity and education
00:25:08.820equity and all the ways that we relate to each other. Environment is how we treat each other
00:25:15.740because how we treat one another will manifest in the physical environment around us. And it will
00:25:22.840look like what it looks like right now. It'll look like climate change. It'll look like
00:25:29.880loss of habitat. It'll look like coronavirus. It'll look like pandemic. It'll look like
00:25:37.920everything that is in our environment because we're it. We can't get away from it.
00:27:11.960Well, in preparing for this interview, I came across a quote from Rebecca Solnit that I hold
00:27:39.960really close to my heart. And it reads, quote, I like walking because it is slow. And I suspect
00:27:46.860that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern
00:27:53.060life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness, end quote. So I think about
00:27:58.860walking as pilgrimage and rite of passage, an act of creation that produces its own attitudes,
00:28:05.160reflections, and behaviors. So I'm wondering, what sort of philosophy do you think develops
00:28:10.500from the act of walking? And how has your personal philosophy been informed by walking?
00:28:16.640I think that Thoreau had a great idea. You know, this is nothing original.
00:28:24.940i'm just a follower walking is like i realize that as i walked across the united states
00:28:35.360for example i'm so grateful number one that people had gone before me because there were
00:28:44.700like trails i mean i had been walking in some places where you have to go across country and
00:28:49.620And I don't know if anyone has ever been there, but walking from the East Coast or the West Coast to the East Coast and walking into villages and towns and going over bridges of great rivers, you know that someone was there before you.
00:29:04.660It's like that's how everybody got around. Everybody walks. But this is now. So we've walked and we've run and now we're riding and we're driving and we're flying. I mean, so this is an incredible time.
00:29:23.160So walking for me is like stepping outside of what's going on, the culture, the society. It's like the ultimate journey that you can take is your own two feet, if you have two feet. And if you don't have two feet, there's other ways you can do this.
00:29:45.220It's like we're walking back across the United States and someone, they didn't walk, they had a wheelchair, called themselves planet wheelers.
00:29:53.560Well, we call ourselves planet walkers.
00:29:55.480They said, well, I'm a planet wheeler.
00:30:13.020we learn in a different way when we move through space connected to the planet. The planet changes
00:30:21.840as we change. Well, someone said, well, you're not going to change the world by doing what you're
00:30:26.920doing. And I mean, I think they're correct that I'm not going to change the world and I'm not
00:30:33.340sure that I would want to change the world. But you do change yourself and you do change a part
00:30:40.320of the world and that's the part that you are i would love to empower people to be that change
00:30:47.540to be that change that you are not that i am but that you are and as we walk we're all changing
00:30:55.780we're all making that journey together it's like in more parts of the world more people walk than
00:31:03.260they do anything else so walking is we're still connected to the earth
00:31:08.080I want to keep on this topic of personal change and preparing for this interview. I came across
00:31:16.540a time where you said, as I drove my car over the Golden Gate Bridge, I felt some responsibility for
00:31:23.720the mess washing up on the shore. It was nearly a year afterwards, still feeling this responsibility
00:31:29.120that I gave up the use of motorized vehicles and started walking in quote. And so I'd love to
00:31:35.140discuss personal responsibility with you. When it comes to climate change or environmental
00:31:40.380degradation, this topic remains contentious as many feel that it's impossible to weigh
00:31:46.260our personal actions and the impacts against that of major corporate polluters or industrial
00:31:52.260complexes. And rightly so, of course. But at the same time, I don't think this means that we can
00:31:58.620get to absolve ourselves of personal responsibility. So can you speak to the
00:32:03.640importance of changing yourself, even if you can't change the world or want to?
00:32:09.720Well, I mean, walking was my attempt to not only change myself, but I thought more about
00:32:17.940that if I started walking, that people would see me walk and they would say,
00:32:23.500yeah, let's do that. Let's walk. Everyone would give up riding in their cars and,
00:32:28.880And, you know, thousands of people would start walking and that was going to be a big change.
00:32:34.240And maybe that's happening, but it might be taking longer than I thought, because when I started walking, people just kind of looked at me and said, John, that's crazy.
00:32:45.300What do you expect is going to happen? What do you expect you're going to do?
00:32:49.280And once I realized my mother would say that I was just hardheaded or stubborn that I would keep doing that.
00:32:57.840But I got to this place where I enjoyed it. I started walking and stopped riding in cars. And it was kind of, you know, different. So I could do it for a little while. And then it became obvious that everybody wasn't going to do this. I was going to be the only one in my community that would do this. And no one's going to change. And it was just up to me to keep doing it if I wanted.
00:33:23.960And my mother would say, it's my stubbornness that just kept me going. But I believe that as I continue to do it, something happened. Something happened to me because of being connected to the earth again, to be moving at that three mile an hour pace.
00:33:47.280And I felt I was being healed and that I needed healing because when I gave up riding in motorized vehicles, I must have been very angry.
00:33:59.160I felt that I had a chip on my shoulder and that if you didn't do what I did, then there was something wrong with you.
00:35:01.680I drank that milk that came in a milk truck and all those things.
00:35:05.700So no matter how much responsibility you think you're taking, you're still part of it.
00:35:12.640And the thing that you need to remember is that we're all in it together, no matter what you do and no matter how you do it.
00:35:23.140And so at some point, you have to let go that I'm doing better or I'm doing more than that other person's doing.
00:35:30.180I think we can only do what we can do, and I think we're responsible to do what we can do.
00:35:38.120And whatever that little bit is, because even no matter what we do, we're still going to be part of the whole planet, the whole system, the whole everything.
00:35:48.440So I feel that someone says, well, I'm only going to be able to recycle.
00:35:55.400And maybe five years from now, they're going to say, hey, you know, we're recycling and it's just being thrown into the dumps and the landfill.
00:43:16.180And in the night, there was a loon that's voice just kind of pierced the air.
00:43:22.500And it was kind of, oh, very, very spooky loons.
00:43:26.340And just feeling that, I just felt that it went through me and it just made me okay.
00:43:33.660And I said, Dad, of course that was death.
00:43:37.760Of course I recognized death because death is really part of who we are.
00:43:44.020If death isn't familiar to us, if death did not exist, if death was not something that we knew, life wouldn't mean anything. It has to be that way. And I said, was I going to give up walking now and just start driving because it was too dangerous? And I thought about it and I decided, no, I wasn't. And it was because death's going to find me no matter what.
00:46:07.300you're such an incredible storyteller i was right with you on the russian river i felt like i was a
00:46:23.940fly on the wall reliving that story with you i can't wait to re-listen again well there's so
00:46:30.340many places to go from here. There's so many things I could ask you. I do want to focus on
00:46:37.180something regarding your work with the US Coast Guard. And if I understand this correctly,
00:46:43.480at the time of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, you were one of the only people in the US who had
00:46:50.480studied oil spills at a PhD level and were ultimately asked by the US Coast Guard to
00:46:56.980develop oil spill regulation. And I know many of us assume regulation and policy to be boring and
00:47:04.320abstract, but it has dire consequences and highlights the importance of the legal and
00:47:09.360political realms. So what was your experience in contributing to these regulatory measures? And,
00:47:15.500you know, especially as someone who took such an unconventional path to get there?
00:47:20.720Yeah, that's a really good question. And I had no idea. I had no idea that this would happen or that I would be on the other side of the United States with a PhD in land resources with a dissertation in oil spills in the marine environment.
00:47:39.720environment, you know, the costs and the conventions of how we clean them up, what damage they pose and
00:47:48.880cause and how we mitigate those things. And I can remember being in school in Wisconsin, Gaylord
00:47:57.140Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, and my major professor. I mean, you know, you have to
00:48:04.620realize that these institutions, particularly the University of Wisconsin, had accepted me into
00:48:11.420their PhD program, and I didn't speak. And I was walking from, I think at the time I applied,
00:48:19.200I was in South Dakota, living, working as a printer in South Dakota, and that I wrote and
00:48:25.820said, I'm looking at the PhD program. And they said, yeah, yeah, you should come because,
00:48:30.400and we think we can support you, that they said they think they could support me,
00:48:35.320meaning they were going to give me a fellowship. I couldn't believe that. And so I showed my dad
00:48:42.040the letter to make sure that that's what they said, because when he came out to visit me
00:48:46.780in South Dakota, he read this letter and he said, looks like they're going to give you money. And
00:48:51.440that he said that, I figured that was the truth because he was really kind of strict about, well,
00:48:57.900how are you going to pay for that? Or where are you going to get the money for that? And, you know,
00:49:01.560what are you getting paid for doing this? And I got to the University of Wisconsin and I had a
00:49:07.840major professor. His name was John Steinhardt, who passed away. He spent, I think, a whole semester
00:49:14.420with me, letting me figure out what I was going to write about. And one day I came to him after
00:49:21.340just trying to, I was going to write about the United Nations and the World Bank and
00:49:27.220everybody's like looking at me and how I spoke with him was not with words but he says because
00:49:34.520I was drilling for oil or two tankers had collided I pushed like two boats had smashed and the oil
00:49:41.100was rolling all over his desk and then the floor I was doing mine and he says oil spills that's a
00:49:47.860good one John I think you should write about oil spills and he would say I was wondering when that
00:49:53.040was going to come up when you were going to think about that. And he had written a book called
00:49:58.320Blowout. It's about the Santa Barbara oil spill. And the Santa Barbara oil spill, which happened
00:50:05.580in 1969 off of Santa Barbara, was the oil spill that started the environmental movement. It was
00:50:13.920that oil spill. So I ended up studying oil spills. I mean, once I started, I realized, well, that's
00:50:21.240what I should be studying because it's why I was walking. It's why I started on this journey.
00:50:28.260I was writing about oil spills. I was getting published already because people were finding
00:50:33.200out about me and the oil spill intelligence or they were using my data to make graphs and things
00:50:39.280in their magazine that went out to the industry. And finally, the Coast Guard called because they
00:50:45.620heard about this guy who was at the University of Wisconsin who was getting published and they
00:50:51.140wanted me to come to Washington. They said, what do you mean he doesn't? We want to talk to him.
00:50:56.820And they said, well, you know, he doesn't talk. And it's like, oh, is there something wrong? And
00:51:00.880he goes, no, he just took a vow of silence. He doesn't speak. I said, well, we just want him to
00:51:05.620come out to Washington. Well, you know, he walks everywhere. And I guess a resource man,
00:51:12.640Admiral says, is anybody normal at your school? Because when I was studying oil skills at Wisconsin,
00:51:18.960And my friends would say to me, they said, John, why are you studying oil spills? No one's really interested in them and no one's going to give you a job. And because I had a fellowship, I was not thinking about, well, I have to get a job to pay my school loans back.
00:51:34.780And that was before Exxon Valdez happened in 1989. And that's why they called, because I was there already studying oil spills. And so I was one or if not the only person studying oil spills at that time in the United States at a PhD level.
00:51:50.760So when I got to the East Coast and started speaking, they got a hold of me again, the Coast Guard, and wanted me to come down. I was in Vermont at the time. They offered me a plane ticket. And because I was speaking, I could talk to them on the phone. I said, no, I don't fly.
00:52:09.320And they said, well, you can take a train, Dr. Francis, and we'll absolutely reimburse you. And I said, you know, I don't use trains either. And I says, well, Dr. Francis, you don't drive in motorized vehicles either, do you? I said, no.
00:52:24.460I said, we'll get back to you. And lo and behold, they did and asked me how I could get there. And I said, I could ride my bicycle. And they said, well, we'll be waiting. And I said, how long will that take? Two months.
00:52:36.120And this is all laughing and showed up there in two months. And next thing I know, I'm working at the Coast Guard. I asked my boss, I said, so how come you hired me? He says, well, you know, you had a PhD. You could have hired somebody else with a PhD with someone that is less eccentric.
00:52:55.060He said, you know, last time I looked, John, they weren't given these degrees away.
00:53:03.620And we figured you must know something because you got one.
00:53:10.880He said, I just want you to be here and walk around, look at things, how we're doing things.
00:53:16.980And if you have a crazy idea, come tell me what it is, because we might be able to do it the way we're doing things.
00:53:26.100And it's going to be different. Because we've been doing the same thing year after year after year after year.
00:53:32.520And look where we are. We're still having this problem. So it might look really outside of the box.
00:53:39.420Come and talk to me about it, because we might be able to do that.
00:53:42.960Of course, then again, John, it may be just crazy and we won't be able to. But in the end, we did so many amazing things. We were holding conferences, environmental conferences, closed circuit with a black college satellite network.
00:54:00.700and we were looking at how environmental justice was really a part of what was going on in our
00:54:09.400environment and how it affected oil spills. We did regulatory negotiations where we brought all
00:54:15.520the interested parties together in front of a judge, meaning the environmental groups and the
00:54:21.940industry and everybody together. We had to hammer out what it is that we all wanted and what would
00:54:29.100work for everybody. And then we signed an agreement and the judge would say, okay, now I don't want to
00:54:35.080see you guys in court, which was something that some environmental groups might do. They would
00:54:39.880bring up a court case, which was just the easiest way to get back into the industry, but it would
00:54:46.880cost a lot of time, a lot of money, and it's best to figure this out in the beginning. And so these
00:54:53.160regulatory negotiations, I think were like a gold standard for getting regulations to happen
00:55:00.200because we have to regulate this. It has to be regulated because we're not doing it based on
00:55:06.240the open market, right? The free market where we're just about making profit. We have to look
00:55:11.500at the environment too. And that's what we did is we did look at the environment and we looked at
00:55:16.700economy of scale for small businesses and how to regulate large companies. So I was really happy
00:55:24.280about that. Well, I'm so happy that they were willing to be patient for you and were, yeah,
00:55:33.420willing to step outside the box. That's so rare. And I just love how you stuck with your journey
00:55:41.520and said, yeah, it'll take me two months by bike. But if you're willing, I'll be there.
00:55:47.020That's just so, so good. I love that. And John, I could honestly listen to you for hours and
00:55:55.000totally get lost in your storytelling. But sadly, as this interview is coming to a close,
00:56:01.680I do want to take a moment and ask you about grief and anger. And I'm thinking about your
00:56:10.780journey. And I wonder if you ever felt anger or grief or despair, particularly in terms of
00:56:16.780witnessing the 1971 San Francisco Bay oil spill. And at this point, I think unfortunately,
00:56:23.880many of us can relate to an event like that. And many might also admit to getting mired in
00:56:30.960paralyzing grief or even a sort of narcissistic anger, both of which prevent any sort of long-term
00:56:37.900action. So I'm wondering if you could speak to the necessity of and your personal capacity for
00:56:44.580moving through anger and grief in service to something greater.
00:56:49.160There's a lot of things to say about that. One, I just received an email from a friend who
00:56:56.140has type 1 diabetes. He was born with it and he's like writing a book and he wants to keep moving
00:57:03.180I think it's on the move with type one. He read my book and he said, there's something that I said that really stuck with him about going through hardship and disaster and things like that.
00:57:17.440Well, I had talked about when we have these things like disaster, that we use it, again, I'm a follower here, that many people say this, and that we use that disaster, that moment in our grief, our despair, to actually use that as an opportunity to change.
00:57:43.280And in doing so, you're going to survive that, but we're also going to come out of it even better than we were before. I think if someone said, that which does not kill me makes me stronger, was that Heidegger? Wonderful. I believe that.
00:58:02.960But also, which is more humorous to me, was sometimes people would say things about me.
00:58:11.460And my friends would say, did you hear what that person said?
00:58:15.160Well, I just wouldn't hear it that way.
00:58:17.820I wouldn't hear it the way that they said that was an insult to me.
00:58:30.540But I think when people said, well, John, you're crazy for doing what you're doing, or you shouldn't do this. And they came up against us that we're diametrically opposed to what you're doing. And how could I be angry with them? I mean, I think there was a time when I would be angry.
00:58:47.980But then there became a time when I was just grateful for them to be who they were so that I could define who I was, so that it would help me say, no, that is how I feel.
00:59:02.380I do feel like walking is a good way to know the planet.
00:59:06.680I do feel like kindness is really a way to be that's going to influence the environment.
00:59:13.880I think love is going to influence the environment.