Maintenance Phase - BONUS： Moon Juice Taste Test

00:00:00.000 okay i i have had minutes to think about this and i couldn't even come up with something good

00:00:18.620 uh okay the only thing i could think of was welcome to maintenance phase

00:00:24.500 the podcast that is sometimes rusty but never dusty all right i like that one i don't know

00:00:31.680 what it means but it rhymes i don't know what it means either i feel a little rusty do you

00:00:35.840 feel a little rusty have you heard our other taglines when have we not been rusty we're

00:00:43.160 entirely composed of rust uh i'm ombre gordon i'm michael hobbs and you know that you know us

00:00:52.520 you're here you know that hello and this month michael we're digging in on some updates from

00:00:58.580 my old favorite moon juice i am so excited we're doing a thing that i've wanted to do with you for

00:01:04.900 ages which is a moon dust taste test yes so i i received in the mail a few days ago a package

00:01:13.920 with a lovely card and a bunch of little sachets that i thought were condoms and i was like why

00:01:21.080 is offering sending me condoms and then i was like oh they're actually wait can i can i read

00:01:26.720 the ones you sent me yes absolutely so okay so i i have like what was it like the the sampler

00:01:33.320 platter or something it's like the the flight dust dust flight they call it the full moon okay

00:01:39.380 a genuinely not a terrible name this is literally all marketing so it makes sense that these people

00:01:48.400 are good at marketing absolutely okay so i have they're all in like wonderful earth tones i have

00:01:54.820 a sachet of spirit dust i have beauty dust i have power dust that one's yellow i have dream dust

00:02:04.840 sex dust obviously and brain dust listen we haven't decided which ones of these to try we

00:02:12.540 haven't decided like whether you and i are trying the same things or different things any of that

00:02:17.280 kind of stuff but i do just want to say like i feel like we would be under delivering if at least

00:02:22.780 one of us didn't taste sex dust you have to walk me through how to do this because i don't know how

00:02:27.700 to consume a dust my prediction is that this is going to be a very disappointing taste test because

00:02:33.900 they probably don't taste like anything it's basically just like a crushed up nutrition

00:02:37.700 supplement like it's just a normal thing but they're they basically rebranded taking like a

00:02:43.680 morning multivitamin as like dust to make it i guess more of a ritual or like i i think it's

00:02:48.980 like a marketing thing because it's basically just like a pill that you swallow but they're

00:02:53.200 turning it into this like activity that you do in the morning i guess well except it's different

00:02:58.380 than a multivitamin because it does not have vitamins added because it is useless it's like

00:03:05.720 a vitamin without the vitamins because it's fake in addition to this taste test folks at insider

00:03:14.620 did you know they do their pieces that are like let's go inside a troubled company oh yeah yeah

00:03:20.440 they did one on moon juice earlier this year and it's a wild ride okay i'll say there's like a lot

00:03:27.780 in this piece we're gonna skate past some of it because it's just generally messy as ever we're

00:03:33.760 going to do my favorite thing which is go um in sort of escalating like it's going to get worse

00:03:38.620 and worse okay the further we go and we'll do our taste test sort of in there uh as we're sort of

00:03:44.800 walking through okay there is some stuff related to the ingredients that i was reading last night

00:03:50.640 as i prepped for this show and i was like we should talk about this before we do a taste test

00:03:54.500 because there are some allegations there are some allegations oh my god but first mike tell me what

00:04:01.380 do you remember about moon juice i think the main thing i remember is amanda chantal bacon who is

00:04:07.420 the gwyneth of moon juice and she became infamous through this like food diary another food diary

00:04:14.240 person again being like i have spirulina herbal cashews every day and like goji berry stevia milk

00:04:25.380 for lunch and like just kind of a list of like superfood fads everyone kind of made fun of her

00:04:30.680 And then it seems like she's very successfully turned this into this brand of like health LA

00:04:36.900 influencer smoothie stuff. Totally. In terms of food diaries, Pete Evans walked so that Amanda

00:04:43.460 Chantal Bacon could run. She really took that business over the finish line. Impressive. 1.00

00:04:49.760 Yeah. I would say we didn't really hear a lot in that first episode about the internal life

00:04:54.980 at Moon Juice because there hadn't really been much reporting on it at that point.

00:04:58.260 But if you think about a company with really dubious marketing practices, a company with making big claims and sort of like doing this pretty aggressive whitewashing of Eastern and indigenous like medicine and healing traditions.

00:05:14.540 Right. Like it's not going to be great inside that company.

00:05:18.600 Yeah, it follows to me that a founder who's going in Elle magazine to talk about her 23 minute breath set before her son Rohan wakes is probably not like the greatest, most communicative manager.

00:05:32.760 And did you make that up? Or is that a real fucking thing? 0.98

00:05:35.420 That's a real thing. And I'm pretty sure I got it verbatim. I don't know for sure. 0.99

00:05:39.480 But listen, Mike, we've talked about like, this is the shit that I yell about at parties when I'm drunk. 0.99

00:05:46.400 It's like, fuck, everybody, I'm getting out the Amanda Chantal Bacon Food Diary, and you're all listening to it. 0.99

00:05:52.440 So, like, the headline to know about Moon Juice is that they traffic in what are called adaptogens, 0.99

00:05:57.320 which folks will have seen more and more of over the last couple of years since that episode, right?

00:06:02.620 The idea behind adaptogens are essentially that there are some kinds of substances that you can consume,

00:06:10.980 that you can ingest that will be sort of like the skeleton key to whatever your body needs to deal

00:06:17.120 with whatever kind of stress it is under right okay yeah i will say i read a piece uh last night

00:06:23.960 from fox that called adaptogens quote the cryptocurrency of the wellness world yeah

00:06:29.280 and i was like wait a minute i need you to unpack that and i was like actually i don't

00:06:35.820 And also cryptocurrency is like the QAnon of finance people.

00:06:39.400 So it's like by the transitive property, this is the territory that we're in.

00:06:45.680 Vox summed up the research on adaptogens as, and I quote, conclusively inconclusive.

00:06:51.780 Okay.

00:06:52.120 There's just like not really anything to know here.

00:06:54.160 Almost everything has been an animal study.

00:06:56.400 The handful of human trials that have been done have been small.

00:07:00.000 They've been published in these sort of niche journals.

00:07:02.140 we just like generally don't really know at any kind of reliable level what the impact on humans

00:07:07.420 is but also okay but the i feel like the way that you can tell this is because if there actually

00:07:12.980 were decent studies and good information indicating that there was like a magical

00:07:18.060 ingredient in some foods and not other foods it would be a really big deal yeah it's like

00:07:23.440 self-negating the idea that we would discover something that like oh it reverses the aging

00:07:29.380 process and like the entire public health and academic institutional infrastructure of America

00:07:35.360 is just like, eh, let's let people sell it online. Right. Does not make any sense.

00:07:40.500 Well, I mean, I think it's also like worth noting that moon juice and sort of adaptogens

00:07:47.120 are moving into a similar kind of space as like really a lot of wellness trends right now. I mean,

00:07:53.000 I think probiotics sort of go in this camp. We know that your gut microbiome matters and what

00:07:58.560 kind of bacteria you have in your digestive tract matters. We know that there are quote

00:08:03.280 unquote good kinds of bacteria. And by the way, when people talk about good kinds of bacteria,

00:08:07.820 the other way that folks refer to that is skinny bacteria. It's genuine when they're talking about

00:08:12.180 good and bad gut bacteria, they're straight up talking about like, these are the ones that make

00:08:15.600 you fat. And these are the ones that are associated with thin people. Yeah. What we don't know is how

00:08:20.880 to change the gut bacteria that you have. So basically what's happening right now is people

00:08:25.800 are like kombucha has a bunch of the quote unquote good skinny bacteria. So I'm just going to chug

00:08:31.920 kombucha or whatever. But we don't really know if that actually meaningfully changes anything in the

00:08:38.960 long term or even midterm, right? Like we don't actually know what the health effects are of that

00:08:43.140 in any sort of meaningful way just yet. Right. So I will say just as a starting point, as a little

00:08:49.360 on-ramp to our Moonjuice updates. There was quite a bit in the Insider piece that totally reminded

00:08:56.080 me of messy nonprofit dynamics. Yeah, I was thinking that too, because you've got a charismatic

00:09:01.240 founder, and then the entire company is made in their image. This often happens around figures

00:09:07.280 in development who get a lot of media attention, and then they form NGOs around their personal

00:09:13.480 story or whatever, and they hire a bunch of people. But then it turns out that managing

00:09:17.420 organizations. It's actually really hard. Yeah. And then you've got all these people that are

00:09:21.520 like, uh, I go to work every day and like, we're just this weird kind of shadow organization that's

00:09:26.360 run by someone who's like kind of a little nuts or like has these weird ideas, but they are the

00:09:31.700 only reason we get funding. They are the only reason our organization exists. So it's like,

00:09:35.780 we have to keep propping up this person. Yep. Yes. I, I have had many friends who have been

00:09:41.060 trapped in organizations like this 100 in org development world you call that founder syndrome

00:09:48.020 yeah yeah so a thing that felt sort of symptomatic of that kind of thing is one of the things that

00:09:56.360 they reported in the insider piece is that amanda chantal bacon moved to montecito wait what's that

00:10:04.240 where's montecito is that california oh mike we're getting into it montecito is just outside of santa

00:10:10.020 Barbara. It is one of the wealthiest towns in the United States. Oprah lives there and Prince Harry

00:10:15.820 and Meghan Markle live there. I only know the names of the rich places when they do shows with

00:10:20.160 Real Housewives of in the title. And then I learned the names of places. Or like a prestige vehicle 0.89

00:10:25.800 for Laura Dern. So this is one of the messy nonprofit things where I was like, uh-huh,

00:10:33.080 this tracks. Amanda Chantal Bacon moved to Montecito. She gave a quote at one point that

00:10:39.200 was like something just happens to my ions when i'm out here you're just in a famously lush and

00:10:48.800 beautiful and staggeringly wealthy place it just does something to my ions when i go to the country

00:10:54.080 club and sit with other titans of industry i don't know what it is so it does something to

00:11:00.580 her ions she moved to montecito and like staff at the company found out like through the grapevine 0.67

00:11:06.120 that she like moved to another town and i was like oh this is non-profit garbage this is full

00:11:11.800 non-profit garbage right i i know so many people non-profits who like another thing in founder

00:11:18.780 syndrome is that oftentimes the person who founded the organization like whose existence 0.98

00:11:23.360 the entire organization depends on gets real fucking bored yeah so a lot of these people

00:11:28.040 mentally and sometimes physically clearly just totally check out yeah so the other one that 0.72

00:11:35.120 felt like extremely non-profit-y to me was there were um a ton of rumors internally that she's

00:11:42.260 thinking of selling the company okay oh that also seems like deep non-profit nonsense that like you

00:11:48.180 would have like six months of rumors with no statement from management yeah about like are

00:11:53.520 we gonna merge are we did we just lose like a organizational life-sustaining grant yeah and

00:11:59.460 then and then you would merge or get scooped up by some bigger NGO and they're like nothing's

00:12:04.560 going to change everything's going to be exactly the same then you get laid off like two weeks

00:12:07.860 later everyone's fired total bloodbath everybody's fired so this was the last one that i was like

00:12:15.320 oh this is this is chef's kiss this is the pinnacle of non-profitiness of these updates

00:12:21.000 they decided at the end of 2020 that they should thank their employees for continuing to work

00:12:26.920 through the pandemic and their thank you for a year of working through a global pandemic was

00:12:34.060 that every employee got one frozen pizza but the frozen pizza was from Erewhon 0.97

00:12:46.760 so that's like a $70 frozen pizza guys a fucking frozen pizza it's not even fresh pizza 0.94

00:12:57.860 it's so it's so conceptually insulting oh my god that's like the stories that's like the stories 0.97

00:13:09.300 that went around seattle after our wnba team the storm won the like national championships

00:13:16.180 howard schultz the owner of starbucks and also who owned that team at the time

00:13:21.120 he gave every player on the team a starbucks gift card this is the rumor i don't know if it's true

00:13:28.680 but apparently one of the actual like team members like a wnba player took her mom to starbucks

00:13:35.080 and ordered like two lattes or whatever and gave them the gift card and they're like oh uh

00:13:39.740 you still owe me like a dollar 30 over the value of the card oh my god so it was like a ten dollar 0.99

00:13:45.860 gift card or something it was five dollars holy fucking shit meanwhile like dudes who finish 1.00

00:13:53.780 10th are like being invited to the white house and you're like what the fuck man 0.99

00:13:57.640 but yeah it's it's it's more insulting to just not get anything in situations like that than 0.98

00:14:06.540 to get something that stingy i think the only thing more conceptually insulting would be like

00:14:10.600 pizza rolls or like bagel bites. So those are the non-profit updates. Okay. The first one that

00:14:18.760 we're going to do sort of in earnest, we've got, I think, three sort of escalating concerns of

00:14:25.940 to talk about. The headline about this one, I would say is it's off brand and it's like not

00:14:31.100 great, but it doesn't go much further than that. Right. Okay. So Moon Juice talks a good game sort

00:14:37.680 of on their website in their packaging all kinds of stuff about climate change and environmentalism

00:14:43.640 right they offer compostable flatware cups and plates at all their locations one of their

00:14:50.200 locations had a compost bin for customers for quite some time so you can eat everyone juice

00:14:57.100 i thought it was like a store it's like it's like a juice place so they put their juice in cups that

00:15:02.560 you can compost. They even say on their website, quote, we invest in a future filled with more

00:15:08.440 composting facilities than garbage dumps. But oops, in this insider piece, staff are now saying

00:15:15.660 that even at the locations that had compost bins, there was no composting available. So employees

00:15:22.280 were just told to throw it in the trash. Oh, nice. It wasn't because of any kind of like

00:15:27.180 external, like we're renting in a building and they don't have a composting service or whatever.

00:15:31.960 it was just straight up moon juice wasn't gonna pay for a composting service

00:15:35.640 metaphorically meaningful not a great look but not like a crime right it's a funny thing to like

00:15:44.780 criticize a company for because plenty of companies don't write compost right so it's

00:15:48.860 like ultimately at the end of the day it's just like a company that doesn't compost yeah what

00:15:53.200 gives them the criticism is the hypocrisy right like no one's picketing 7-eleven for not composting

00:15:59.640 because you don't expect 7-Eleven to compost like that's sure yeah so like that's not great

00:16:06.620 but mostly it's just sort of off-brand yeah but then things get more off-brand before we started

00:16:13.480 I told you we should not start with the taste test because I wanted to have a moment of informed

00:16:17.760 consent okay like I want you to know what you're getting into man how how many shocks from the

00:16:24.540 biocharger am I going to need to recover from this taste test moon juice has been telling people

00:16:29.340 this sort of extremely precious uh story about how their ingredients are harvested they're wild

00:16:36.420 crafted which is a very fancy term for basically like foraging right they're picked they're picked

00:16:43.180 yes no one's talking about farm workers wild craft yeah that's right like that's not what's

00:16:48.940 happening there. So this is a quote directly from this insider piece. It's so good. I'm going to

00:16:54.740 link it in the post on Patreon so that folks can read this whole piece because it's bonkers.

00:17:00.600 Quote, store employees said that they were taught to say that all of Moon Juice's products

00:17:05.760 were sustainably and ethically sourced and that Moon Juice set itself apart by importing whole

00:17:11.620 plants that are, quote, custom extracted at a wind powered facility in the Pacific Northwest 1.00

00:17:18.320 using local spring water fuck off amanda you didn't need to throw in like wind powered 0.99

00:17:25.440 you know what this sounds like this sounds like a partner lying about where they've been 1.00

00:17:30.220 oh i was out getting you flowers but the florist was closed so i had to go to a different floor

00:17:35.900 like none of those things happened you are gilding the lily i was receiving my nobel prize at the

00:17:42.440 time and I was not able to attend. So given that story that employees are trained to tell

00:17:48.700 customers, those employees were very surprised when a dude showed up in one of their stores

00:17:53.600 saying that he was the CEO of one of Moon Juice's biggest suppliers. So like Moon Juice is built

00:18:00.680 considerably around Ayurvedic principles, right? Ayurveda, a system of sort of medicine and healing

00:18:07.020 that is mostly born of what is now called india right this supplier says that he is providing

00:18:13.640 moon juice with all of its ashwagandha which is one of its most used ingredients it's in almost

00:18:19.580 all of the dusts it's in many of the juices it's in a lot a lot a lot of things this dude said that

00:18:26.840 all of their stuff was extracted and powdered like turned into a powder in india and then

00:18:33.420 shipped to the U S as a powder. Yeah. No Pacific Northwest facility, no wind powered, no local

00:18:39.780 spring water, no nothing. He was just like, no, it's just from, it's an Indian ingredient from

00:18:44.180 an Indian healing tradition that is being shipped to you from India. The thing that feels wild to

00:18:49.780 me about this is like the incredible commitment to whitewashing. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah.

00:18:56.660 We're going to take this thing. We're going to give you this sort of like broad sense of

00:19:02.140 eastern healing but we're gonna make sure that every face of that that you see is associated

00:19:09.160 with whiteness and westernness and like right conventional beauty all of that kind of stuff

00:19:13.840 right so like that's the thing that's wild to me here is not that they would like have a supplier

00:19:19.060 in india like yeah man great sure but that they would make up this extremely sort of baroque story

00:19:27.940 like fairy tale about like everything's extracted in the pacific northwest the beating heart of

00:19:34.380 whiteness the pacific northwest right like jesus christ well also like progressiveness and like it

00:19:39.820 also has this thing of like and nothing is tainted by any kind of moral compromise right because if

00:19:46.340 it was like a facility in alabama then it's like well what about the abortion rights of the workers

00:19:49.640 like there's some there's some complication that is presented by like basically every story except 0.95

00:19:56.340 for fucking wind powered spring water pacific northwest right you never have to deal with any 0.82

00:20:03.200 moral complexity right and you just imagine like a slightly crunchier version of amanda chantal 0.99

00:20:08.600 bacon up in like some sort of like woodsy northwest city right like it doesn't interrupt your deeply 0.84

00:20:16.840 whitewashed imagination yeah it's a bunch of white people in like twin peaks like putting stuff in 0.89

00:20:22.560 boxes and like going out in the woods and galoshes and like picking mushrooms now that you've

00:20:27.840 mentioned twin peaks i'm like i like imagining the wind-powered spring water-powered facility

00:20:32.500 is run just by like log lady so this is the point at which i'm like oh this doesn't seem great

00:20:41.600 and then it gets real bad okay it looks like in the past according to some previous employees

00:20:49.960 amanda chantal bacon has tried to use contaminated ingredients moon juice had a director of

00:20:58.160 operations uh for a couple of years named manuel alvarado he told insider that they had received

00:21:06.340 a batch at one point from one of their suppliers of pearl powder which is also very commonly used

00:21:12.360 and that batch of pearl powder from that supplier was contaminated with e coli

00:21:17.600 what wait how is that even possible okay so this is the informed consent part i was like i gotta

00:21:24.720 tell mike about this before we try anything i didn't i thought it was like raw meat e coli

00:21:31.860 me too me too but here's where it comes in yeah so i'm gonna send you a quote from the insider

00:21:39.580 piece it says alvarado said that rather than throw out the batch bacon initially tried to save it

00:21:45.480 someone told her that we could freeze it for like six months and that kills the e coli alvarado said

00:21:50.260 we literally sent i don't know how many pallets of this stuff to a cold storage unit and we

00:21:54.360 actually froze it for a couple months and then we brought it back to test it and it still tested

00:21:58.460 the same and she was so mad when we couldn't salvage it right okay so she she tried to hedge

00:22:04.700 I was like, okay, it's going to cost us a lot of money. So let's do like a little work around.

00:22:10.440 And then that didn't work. And she was mad. 1.00

00:22:13.660 So that's not great. The thing that is not greater is that Manuela Alvarado and a number of

00:22:20.800 former senior staff say that Moon Juice didn't test its ingredients at all until 2017.

00:22:28.740 So the idea is there could have been much wider contamination.

00:22:31.040 Right. Manuel Alvarado's quote to Insider is we could easily have been selling E. coli infested

00:22:36.880 pearl without even knowing it. Oh, wow. Because they were operating for six years without testing

00:22:43.700 anything that they got from their suppliers. They were just like suppliers test it. They say it's

00:22:49.140 fine. We trust them. We move on. Yeah. So this was just after they started testing ingredients.

00:22:55.260 Oh, wow. And they found a batch like fairly quickly. Man, it's very easy to forget with

00:23:01.300 these companies that like, yeah, they're selling a consumable product, which does require various

00:23:07.440 quality assurance processes. What you're doing with all of this marketing of it's pure and it's

00:23:14.020 from the earth and all this rhetoric that goes along with these kinds of companies,

00:23:19.360 you trust that like, on top of all this marketing, there's a huge iceberg of like work that they're

00:23:25.240 doing underneath right to like find the right suppliers. But then oftentimes with these

00:23:30.160 companies, it turns out that it's just it's just like the carnival medicine show people that we

00:23:34.580 talked about in the snake oil episode. It's just like, you're just saying stuff. There's nothing

00:23:38.940 underneath this. I think the parallel between Amanda Chantal Bacon and a snake oil salesman

00:23:44.360 is especially apt because what she's doing is so fucking similar to what a bunch of those like 0.97

00:23:52.740 white supervisors were doing in the building of the railroad which was like watching a bunch of 1.00

00:23:59.340 like chinese immigrants use a chinese medicinal sort of therapy which was snake oil which worked 0.98

00:24:05.920 and then they were just like oh man all you got to do is boil a snake i got snakes man yeah yeah 1.00

00:24:11.120 it's mushrooms all right cool i can find some mushrooms right she's straight up just like

00:24:16.860 yoinking a couple of things from their sort of like list of ingredients basically and then sort

00:24:23.580 of mashing it all up in a dust and being like look it's good for you it's sort of eastern but

00:24:27.720 you're buying it from me a conventionally attractive thin white woman right for like 0.84

00:24:31.780 24 or whatever oh my god mike i would love for you to guess this before we get into taste test

00:24:38.500 the full moon is their sampler packet of moon dusts and there's two of each kind of moon dust

00:24:45.380 So there are 14 little packets, 14 doses.

00:24:48.760 So you could do two weeks of moon dust if you do it every day.

00:24:52.880 Would you like to guess how much the little box with 14 sachets costs?

00:24:57.580 Was it like $40 or like something absurd?

00:24:59.780 It was $35.

00:25:01.100 Mike, you were so close.

00:25:02.080 I love it.

00:25:02.780 Oh my God.

00:25:04.260 So Mike, we have one more update after this, but I thought right after the contamination

00:25:09.980 update might be the highest stakes time to try a taste test.

00:25:13.260 Do you want to try a taste test?

00:25:14.180 right after i know i'm gonna die yeah what is our plan for doing this because how do you eat 0.99

00:25:19.220 the fucking dust what am i gonna do i don't either so i spent a an inordinate amount of 0.97

00:25:25.440 time on their website last night trying to figure out what their serving suggestions are and all 0.99

00:25:29.060 that sort of stuff here is a thing that makes me suspicious there are two things that make me

00:25:34.780 suspicious well three things the third thing is the name dust makes me suspicious of the taste

00:25:40.640 of these things. Yeah. It's not, it's not going to be good. The next thing that makes me suspicious

00:25:45.640 is that many of their sort of quote unquote recipes for, you know, what to do with your

00:25:50.800 dusts involve putting them in a blender with whatever drink, like put your coffee in a blender

00:25:57.580 and then put in the dust and then blend it on high for like three minutes and then drink it.

00:26:03.200 That makes me suspicious about texture. Okay. And the third thing is that they tell you

00:26:09.500 when they give you their serving suggestions they're not just like mix it into some hot

00:26:14.660 water with lemon right or anything like that it's all like put it in a smoothie or some espresso

00:26:20.940 or hot chocolate or like they want you to put it with extremely already flavorful beverages

00:26:28.000 which makes me suspicious right there are other ones that are like just mix it with some hot

00:26:32.760 water well let's do that one because then we'll actually taste the dust so i have a cup i have

00:26:37.060 like a cup of coffee here and i also have some hot water wait okay i i i have some i have some 0.98

00:26:42.720 coffee left over from this morning i can also get some coffee perfect let's do it let's do sex dust

00:26:47.680 as the one we try in hot water because that's the one i want okay yeah i want to taste i want to 0.99

00:26:52.060 taste the sex um okay go grab your coffee okay yes let me know when you're ready and i'll turn

00:26:57.260 on my little electric kettle to heat up some water oh it's am i i'm heating up water i'm boiling

00:27:01.980 water i think so yeah all right coffee and boil water thank you okay all right what do you think

00:27:12.360 we should put in the coffee uh okay we got brain dream power spirit and beauty uh maybe dream

00:27:20.880 because it'll counteract the coffee yeah there you go we have to do we have to we have to take

00:27:27.240 in the marketing here yeah so mine says on the back adaptogens for sleep asterisk target stress

00:27:34.520 for relief of tension to promote deep tranquil rest asterisk sweet and floral pairs well with

00:27:40.500 tea milk and hot water blend one sachet per serving okay and then there's the most abysmally

00:27:48.320 small font please consult your health care provider if you're pregnant nursing keep out

00:27:53.940 reaches children okay sort of uh boilerplate and then it has the legend for the asterisk

00:28:00.000 these statements have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration

00:28:03.840 this product is not intended to diagnose treat cure or prevent any disease there it is so again

00:28:10.740 this is fake this enjoy but please enjoy we don't intend to substantiate any of our claims

00:28:20.000 yeah nothing nothing is real all right okay let me all right all right i'm stirring it in god

00:28:27.500 it smells kind of like pepper oh it does it's kind of it's kind of nice it's like kind of spicy

00:28:31.800 oh mike yeah it's gonna taste fucking terrible coffee though it's clump city over here i don't

00:28:37.400 know about you oh yeah mine's yeah it's a little bit like when you're a kid and you're like mixing 0.80

00:28:42.780 up like a packet of hot cocoa yeah and it sort of develops those little balls of powder that are

00:28:48.220 sort of wet on the outside but dry as a bone inside that looks like what's happening so i put

00:28:53.660 it in my coffee it looks like chicken stock basically it's like that kind of color bouillon

00:28:58.200 yeah yeah and it's not it's it's really not dissolving it really doesn't want to dissolve

00:29:05.700 it doesn't want to dissolve i have a lot of little specks on the inside of my coffee cup it looks

00:29:12.240 it looks so gross

00:29:14.540 Aubrey it looks like

00:29:16.520 ashes it looks like

00:29:18.080 sediment oh my god

00:29:20.340 do you know what I mean it looks like sediment at the bottle

00:29:22.560 of bottom of a bottle of wine or something

00:29:24.220 I'm questioning my commitment

00:29:26.220 to sparkle motion I don't know if I can

00:29:28.480 go through with this Mike listen

00:29:30.280 let me just sweeten the pot for you

00:29:32.420 don't forget there might also be

00:29:34.440 eagles

00:29:34.840 this might

00:29:38.460 harm you physically

00:29:39.720 hey man it might be terrible for you for days to come aubrey i'm scared i don't want to do this

00:29:47.380 anymore listen i don't i genuinely don't want to make you do anything you're uncomfortable with

00:29:52.880 doing no i'm i'm i'm not worried about e coli it just i feel like i'm worried about really

00:29:59.220 tasting something really bad that's my main worry here is just like okay this is gonna taste bad

00:30:04.120 i'm also frankly a tiny bit worried that it's gonna taste good and then i'm gonna be like god

00:30:08.660 damn i know and then 40 bucks every two weeks then you're in

00:30:11.540 the next time you see me i'll be wearing only white linen i know 0.99

00:30:17.660 the show's different since you moved to montecito yeah how's yours how's your what's your dissolving

00:30:25.600 dissolvular situation i think it has dissolved as much as it's gonna which is not much

00:30:31.160 i think okay yeah basically the texture of the powder i would say is part of it was a really

00:30:37.480 fine powder and then there were chunks of something yeah in it like little dried leaves

00:30:42.560 maybe or some something those things have not dissolved because they wouldn't but the finer

00:30:48.140 powder appears to have dissolved yeah but also i feel like there's a good chance that i get to the

00:30:51.860 end of this cup of coffee and then there's just like a thick sludge at the bottom yeah i think

00:30:55.720 that's what i think that's what's happening because i'm i'm getting sludge it's giving sludge on the

00:31:00.180 bottom all right mike i feel like you and i are now just vamping to avoid tasting this thing yeah

00:31:05.740 i know that's 100 what's happening right now all right let's do it all right you ready all right

00:31:11.300 three two one dream dust

00:31:14.240 oh it definitely tastes different it tastes really different part of it doesn't taste bad and then

00:31:22.020 part of it tastes real bad like there's like a sour element the way that it tastes to me is as

00:31:27.560 if the milk in my latte has gone sour it does yes it tastes like that in mine even there's no milk

00:31:32.900 in mind yeah it's not like immediately unpleasant it's not like celery juice god awful yeah it

00:31:40.120 tastes like um you know it has like a vaguely sort of like ghost of chocolate past kind of

00:31:46.600 taste like carob style like dust dusty chocolate but then the finish is really sour it kind of

00:31:53.640 tastes like a cleaning product smells it has like a weird floral thing i didn't think you were

00:32:01.640 gonna come up with sicker burns for the one that you kind of like well then for like celery juice

00:32:07.560 top note dusty chocolate heart note yeah heart note cinnamon and base note sour milk i don't

00:32:17.500 i mean okay wait wait wait how much is each sachet so it's 35 bucks divided by 14 so it's 250 yeah for

00:32:25.020 for 250 every day i'm not doing this that's that's almost what a cup of coffee costs you 0.93

00:32:31.460 know sometimes you'll have like a fucking diet bar or like energy bar like one of the meal 0.98

00:32:37.220 replacement things and you're like god damn why does anybody eat or drink this yeah i don't have 0.94

00:32:42.660 that feeling about this but i do have the feeling of i won't be doing this again thanks no absolutely 0.91

00:32:48.100 not no i'm not i'm not gonna finish it my coffee's sitting there like three quarters full i'm not 0.90

00:32:52.740 gonna be finishing it all right are you ready to go in on sex dust let's do sex dust are we doing 0.95

00:32:58.720 boiling water for this one i'm doing boiling water i've i just uh heated up water while you 0.94

00:33:03.800 were uh grabbing your coffee okay i'll be right back okay oh

00:33:09.740 oh oh my god okay i i just poured i just poured the rest of the coffee down the sink

00:33:25.720 and there was so much sludge in the glass. It was just like sand at the bottom.

00:33:35.040 I'll tell you what, I stayed recording while you were going to get your to get your hot water and

00:33:40.300 such. And while you did that, I poured my hot water over the little emptied out sachet of sex 0.98

00:33:47.880 dust. Okay, I did not intend to get a first impression, but I absolutely did. Which was 0.76

00:33:53.560 just like a wave of smell like the smell of the hot water sex dust wait wait i got it now 1.00

00:34:00.140 oh fuck oh wait what is this shit wait we didn't even read the back of the label yeah we didn't 0.99

00:34:09.280 even read the description so let's read the description because it's gonna sound nicer 1.00

00:34:12.960 than how i feel about the smell you read this one because mine's all torn up oh god it really

00:34:17.320 smells it reeks aubrey it smells extremely much like a porta potty like it really shocking there

00:34:26.820 is an old pee smell it smells like a fraternity old pee in the summer oh my god this one says

00:34:35.980 this one's gonna be rough target stress to support healthy hormonal balance igniting creative energy

00:34:41.820 in and out of the bedroom asterisk a smoky cacao flavor pairs well with coffee chocolate tea and

00:34:48.900 milk or add to any smoothie so the last one dream dust was like hey you could put this in hot water

00:34:54.400 and i buy that this one is specifically like this one try not to taste it really feels like the

00:35:01.000 serving recommendation here it is like bad sex and that it's just like something you never want

00:35:05.820 to think about again and you want to cover it up with something else i don't want to drink this

00:35:11.580 okay i we both put this in like bright clean clear water and then it immediately turned 0.91

00:35:18.780 fucking brown it's like the thickest brown color now it looks like coffee it looks terrible can 0.87

00:35:26.220 we go cameras on for one second yeah here's here's my situation yeah that's what it looks 0.99

00:35:33.480 not good mike the combination the combination of the of the color and the smell aubrey it's that

00:35:41.320 that's what's doing it the combination it is the smell of a parking garage stairwell

00:35:49.140 in like a major u.s city on like the hottest day of the year like that's the smell

00:35:56.040 oh no michael all right are we doing it i hate the show yeah i hate my job why do we do this

00:36:07.160 i told us to do this and i'm filled with the most profound dread i have felt in a very long time

00:36:15.820 okay let's do it all right okay three two one go

00:36:20.940 oh it's not good oh the aftertaste

00:36:29.660 the aftertaste oh it's getting worse i would say the heart note for this one is i would say swamp

00:36:38.200 water yeah it's i mean the nice thing is it tastes diluted it tastes like really diluted

00:36:42.780 like nescafe or something that sort of watery taste but then it also just has a like old sock

00:36:49.700 it's totally old sock oh no it's old sock and then the aftertaste is just it's not i i would

00:36:58.300 like to go back to the sour i will say this the taste is bad i think the smell is worse yeah i

00:37:05.060 think so too it was not as bad as i thought it was going to be totally that's that's that's the

00:37:09.940 advertising copy they're gonna put on their website the smell is worse than the taste

00:37:14.940 and then just you and me giving the thumbs up like that's the maintenance phase endorsement

00:37:20.780 right there this is one of the ones where they pick like a critics quote for a movie and it's

00:37:25.620 like seven ellipses i i used to work for a book publisher and a reviewer once called one of our

00:37:30.940 books lavishly illustrated and utterly unreadable and on the book we put lavishly illustrated

00:37:37.240 all right i gotta get this taste out of my mouth that was terrible i'm going cameras back off yeah

00:37:46.340 cameras off let's drink something normal we should do at least one more which which one do we think

00:37:50.740 is going to do a third moon dust yeah i feel like we have to like we have to give moon juice a chance

00:37:56.840 to redeem itself okay so we have the remaining ones that we have are spirit dust beauty dust

00:38:02.740 brain dust and power dust brain dust is described as malty and bitter great power dust is described

00:38:10.700 as earthy and bright okay that's in the running uh beauty dust is described as a tart berry flavor

00:38:18.020 okay and spirit dust is described as sweet and nutty which one do you which one do you prefer

00:38:23.640 i would go beauty dust or spirit dust okay so we've got tart berry or sweet and nutty i'd say

00:38:29.860 tart berry that's the highest likelihood of success let's do it beauty dust okay number

00:38:34.140 three i am pouring the water over the beauty dust is what i'm doing right now

00:38:38.340 so mine is semi-dissolved and it's a lighter shade of brown than the sex dust yeah it's sort

00:38:47.600 of a cognac yeah yeah wow there are serious chunks happening oh yeah oh god okay this one says

00:38:56.580 adaptogens for skin target stress and accelerated aging improve skin clarity and help protect from

00:39:04.040 free radicals a tart berry flavor pairs well with macho water and lemonade or add to any smoothie

00:39:10.660 okay so we're about to get glowing skin okay glowy skin all right it smells like tea it does

00:39:18.400 smell more floral but also kind of like a charcoal-y floor like a burnt floral yes and

00:39:27.060 there's it's like kind of musty yeah you know what it has it has the smell of an antique store

00:39:32.000 yeah i was gonna say flowers that have been left in a funeral home uh-huh for like a while like

00:39:37.060 that kind of draftiness the chill draftiness chill musty all right we have to stir it up and then

00:39:43.400 immediately drink it so we get as much sediment as possible we want the full experience you can

00:39:47.460 really see the sediment sort of gathering in the bottom like immediately you've got to stir this

00:39:52.100 one pretty constantly all right on three two one we'll stop stirring and immediately drink

00:39:56.120 all right okay three two one beauty dust 1.00

00:40:01.540 oh fuck oh that's oh that's the worst one holy shit oh oh the aftertaste is rough oh it's so 1.00

00:40:16.280 bitter oh my god oh there's like sand in my throat 1.00

00:40:21.780 it's like living through the eruption mountain helens there's just like little particles in my

00:40:29.440 throat wow i read that snuck up on me there's a moment where i'm like oh it's like you mixed

00:40:36.100 potpourri in with hot water and then it takes a real wild turn oh did you take another sip

00:40:42.460 yeah i don't know what i keep doing that to be like give it a fair shake i took three sips of

00:40:48.580 our first two why did i do that oh and then yeah the sediment in my throat is so foul it just

00:40:55.380 separates instantaneously too you know it reminds me of as a kid you know you like struggle to

00:41:03.500 understand that like smells and tastes are not necessarily the same thing so i remember there

00:41:07.680 was like a vanilla scented shampoo in our house oh no did you eat shampoo i was like eight years

00:41:15.060 old and i didn't like fully understand that concept or like my parents told me that they're

00:41:19.460 like don't drink it because it doesn't taste how it smells i was like that's fake it's a future 0.87

00:41:23.560 podcaster and then i fucking drank something it was so gross and i just like puked all over the 0.92

00:41:30.680 bathroom immediately oh my god but like this has the same kind of feel where it's like the smell 0.97

00:41:37.320 is kind of floral whatever but then the taste is just totally different and just like a chimney 0.95

00:41:44.440 oh and now i just have like little bits in my mouth forever god damn it but at least it costs 0.82

00:41:52.360 more than a cup of coffee to have this experience on the bright side at least you're paying a huge 0.91

00:41:58.180 premium for this it's expensive and it might give you e.coli so i would say my least bad was dream

00:42:07.440 dust but that was also the one we mixed into coffee so that might not be fair yeah i feel

00:42:11.660 like they went they got worse as they went along i would switch for me beauty dust was my second

00:42:17.740 worst and sex dust was my worst worst the level of evocativeness of the smell i know of sex dust

00:42:25.880 it's really unreal like i am very glad to be burning a scented candle right now because i

00:42:31.540 just want that covered up like yesterday thanks i'm gonna have to make a frozen pizza after this

00:42:36.840 okay okay so we have one more set of updates okay uh on moon juice and this is where i think it

00:42:47.080 gets worse okay in the summer of 2020 moon juice did what a lot of corporations did in response to

00:42:56.560 the murder of george floyd and the subsequent uprisings right they posted a black square

00:43:02.840 with like a sort of corporate statement in it about holding themselves accountable and blah

00:43:08.460 blah blah so i just sent you the link to their statement oh no we're back in like tone deaf

00:43:15.460 corporate summer of 2020 statements well just like what do you think a company run by amanda

00:43:23.260 chantal bacon has to say about race okay so it's the black square and then in white text it says

00:43:28.680 black lives matter our eyes are open we take responsibility for helping to build an industry

00:43:33.480 that is painfully in need of diversity and inclusion we are holding ourselves accountable

00:43:37.600 by bringing in an equity consultant and scheduling anti-racism workshops

00:43:41.420 on this platform we are making space for meaningful information in solidarity we are

00:43:48.800 putting our energy into marching donating calling writing and unlearning and then the comments the 1.00

00:43:55.040 first listed comment on this post on my end is where is your apology to all the former black

00:44:01.020 and poc employees who moon juice management and culture has harmed during their employment

00:44:05.920 yeah again like this post goes up current and former bipoc staff are like a record scratch

00:44:12.740 excuse me they start collaborating on a google doc of the many many experiences of racism that

00:44:21.440 they had had while working for moon juice one black employee who was the only black employee

00:44:28.000 at one of their stores said that the regional manager who was white regularly asked her to

00:44:34.760 do her hair differently oh similarly at one point moon juice runs a booth at the echo park craft fair

00:44:41.880 in la and at the end of the fair it started to rain and two of the black employees who were

00:44:48.300 working at the fair covered their hair and according to the insider piece quote the same

00:44:54.780 regional manager who was their direct boss laughed and said black girls in your hair okay 0.99

00:45:01.520 right so they couldn't report this regional manager to anyone because uh moon juice does

00:45:08.720 not have hr oh what yeah what well i have some suggestions on how to hold themselves accountable 0.96

00:45:17.040 genuinely so from that which is not great to like real gross which is uh another black employee um 0.92

00:45:27.260 was asked to participate in a marketing photo shoot. She worked in one of the stores. And for 0.96

00:45:34.560 that two day photo shoot, she was paid her usual hourly wage. Oh, yeah, that's really bad.

00:45:42.140 Afterward, she found out that the other models, none of whom were store employees, and all of

00:45:47.500 whom were white, were paid with a $1,000 moon juice gift card. Okay. And that's also that's

00:45:55.360 pretty exploitative. It's shitty. It's shitty for everyone. But also like somebody got the 0.99

00:46:00.680 equivalent of $1,000 and somebody got like $100. And that's fucked. Right. So here is the quote 0.99

00:46:08.380 from this employee. Imana is her name. It says when she asked her manager and other members of

00:46:13.760 leadership why she didn't receive a gift card, she said she was reminded that she got a discount at

00:46:19.180 the store. I'm like, this isn't about whether or not I get a discount, Imana said. This is about

00:46:26.060 I got paid $100 for this campaign that's going to be everywhere. Yeah. Like your model, like

00:46:32.720 you're doing modeling work, like for a company that is promoting itself and making a shitload

00:46:37.700 of money. You are entitled to like modeling ass wages. Yes. Which also should not be a thousand 0.98

00:46:44.160 dollar gift card to moon juice right like three frozen pizzas

00:46:48.540 it's double bad for moon juice to do this because if you work at target or something and they give

00:46:55.740 you a gift card at least you can like buy groceries with it presumably like all it's also

00:47:00.700 bad for them to do it but at moon juice like what are you even gonna fucking buy with your thousand 0.99

00:47:06.280 dollars it's like a bunch of dumb like mushroom powders and shit pay people an actual money not 0.99

00:47:11.320 a fucking iou for dust future dust oh enjoy so like that's not great here's what's fucking worse 1.00

00:47:19.740 two weeks after the shoot imana was fired oh what yeah she did this photo shoot the photos by the 1.00

00:47:26.180 way ended up being used on fucking sephora's website oh my god she was like hey why didn't 0.90

00:47:32.460 i get paid the same as everybody else and two weeks later she got fired that's extremely bad 0.99

00:47:36.460 Imana's direct manager said that she was pressured by higher-up managers to fire Imana.

00:47:43.900 What?

00:47:44.580 That sounds like a big story.

00:47:46.040 There may be more to this story. 0.98

00:47:47.680 Moonjuice isn't fucking telling it, and it looks terrible to me. 0.90

00:47:51.400 I also think on a very, like, basic level in their post, when they say that, you know, 0.97

00:47:56.320 we're holding ourselves accountable by bringing in, like, an equity consultant. 0.99

00:47:59.980 God damn it. 0.99

00:48:00.780 That's also a red flag. 1.00

00:48:02.520 That's the most bargain basement bullshit. 0.99

00:48:04.320 Companies don't do corporate trainings because they want to change something. Companies do corporate trainings because they want to protect themselves from liability in the case of lawsuits. 0.98

00:48:11.760 Well, and like there has been much, much discussion out in the world and criticism, rightly so, of like diversity director kind of model, right, where companies will hire someone internally whose job it is to do all of the thinking about like race and gender and all of that sort of stuff.

00:48:29.820 right and this isn't even that this isn't even the tokenism approach this is we're going to

00:48:36.260 temporarily hire someone who does not work for the company for a half day gig of giving a workshop 0.94

00:48:42.980 probably over zoom yeah they do talk in the insider piece about like it was real fucking

00:48:48.200 awkward because they didn't tear it out by management levels at all so like store employees 0.99

00:48:53.300 were on and so was amanda chantal bacon so no one was saying shit fuck all anything oh that's 0.97

00:48:59.700 a terrible idea so you're in there with your boss so a bunch of people were just like it was really 0.98

00:49:04.500 fucking weird it was really awkward nobody said anything and then we never talked about it again 0.71

00:49:08.280 and i was like boy again it was like non-profit world yeah yeah that's another one yeah on top 0.97

00:49:15.020 of all of that there are just so many more stories of like really explicit racism in moon juice

00:49:24.860 stores and at Moon Juice Corporate. The manager of the Silver Lake store, according to this

00:49:30.220 insider piece, quote, would often mock the accents of customers she said were from Saudi Arabia.

00:49:37.820 Also in the Silver Lake store, there was a story in which two customers of color walked in,

00:49:43.700 and a white employee started burning Palo Santo in their faces. And when they asked her

00:49:50.520 why she was doing that she said she quote didn't like their vibes yeah both of those instances

00:49:56.300 from the silver lake store were reported but because moon juice doesn't have hr would you

00:50:03.400 like to guess who investigated those claims oh is it amanda no it's the white regional manager who 0.98

00:50:09.320 said a bunch of racist shit oh okay there's no real process yep and i'm gonna send you the sort 0.97

00:50:14.900 of concluding quote about this chapter from the insider piece it says after concluding our 0.99

00:50:20.500 investigation, we were not able to substantiate your allegations. The regional retail manager

00:50:25.260 who left Moon Juice in early 2019 wrote in an email viewed by Insider. The Silver Lake store

00:50:30.200 manager was later promoted. The person who was making fun of people's accents was first

00:50:34.820 investigated and then promoted. So basically, this company just has like no actual control systems

00:50:39.200 in place for this stuff. No. And that's again, that's the part that feels so non-profit-y to me.

00:50:45.580 Oh, my God. I know. God. Everything is scrappy, which means it's shitty.

00:50:49.760 Right. And nothing is written down. Nothing is formalized. There's no formal grievance mechanism. 0.61

00:50:55.580 No policies.

00:50:57.540 When I used to work in corporate human rights violations, we would sort of consult with companies on like how to avoid human rights violations in their operations.

00:51:06.460 the first sign of wanting to avoid human rights violations because like some companies do and

00:51:13.060 some companies don't is like you need to have extremely basic systems in place of just like

00:51:19.100 how does a employee file a complaint who looks at the complaint who investigates the complaint

00:51:24.780 because like yeah whatever in a big company you're gonna get like a racist employee sometimes right

00:51:30.300 that's not really the issue the issue is what happens when that racist employee is like

00:51:35.840 discovered like how how do workers who are not white people tell management about it how does

00:51:41.580 management respond it's all this like structural stuff that is like so 101 to have in place if you 0.97

00:51:48.380 take these issues remotely seriously yeah and like there is sort of a genuine tricky fucking thing

00:51:55.840 that happens in non-profits which is look man you got to have an employee handbook you got to have

00:52:01.300 a board of directors that like understands the employee handbook and understands their role not

00:52:06.680 only as fiduciaries but also as you know accountability to an executive director you

00:52:12.400 got to have all of these things in place that absolutely no funder will fund you to do i know

00:52:17.700 my god jesus i know hey man get your hr stuff set up hey why don't you focus on staff retention

00:52:22.960 and leadership development right hey what if you built a pipeline of staff so that like there were

00:52:28.460 sort of more opportunities for advancement and so that you were getting more and different kinds

00:52:32.540 of people in management than just like white cis people who are middle class right non-profits are 0.99

00:52:37.460 shitty for not doing it and also philanthropy is shitty for not fucking funding that it's layered 0.98

00:52:42.220 it's like a bad it's a it's a perfect storm of bad stuff i'm also i'm i'm much more forgiving of 0.98

00:52:49.140 this kind of stuff at ngos because the idea is sort of the money should go to the mission and

00:52:53.680 there's just so little money in ngos right and so you do skip this kind of stuff whereas at moon 0.69

00:52:59.100 juice this is a company that's charging 35 for 14 teaspoons of bullshit yes yes it in in ngos 0.70

00:53:09.900 sometimes it's literally like we we physically do not have the money and yeah funders don't fund 0.93

00:53:13.940 this stuff at moon juice it's like well what's your excuse right we know that amanda chantal

00:53:18.880 bacon is making enough money to fucking live in montecito i know the ingredients are not being 0.84

00:53:23.740 produced the way that they're saying they're being produced right oops they got a bunch of racism and 0.98

00:53:28.000 like major internal management issues specifically around racism but hey guys it's okay we got you

00:53:34.700 a frozen pizza from era one

00:53:36.440 Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

00:54:06.440 You

Maintenance Phase - September 06, 2022

BONUS： Moon Juice Taste Test

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