Barbara Wiseman: Global Environmental Innovator

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Tron podcast listeners, this is your host, Rashad Woods. And today I have a very special guest who I'm honored that allowed her time to be utilized to be on this platform. She's the co founder of the Earth Organization, Barbara Wiseman. Thank you so much for your time, Rashad. [00:00:15] Speaker B: Thanks for the invitation. Yeah, very, very happy to be here. [00:00:19] Speaker A: You know, I have to say that your, your accolades kind of stuck me in my tracks a little bit. When I got a chance to see all the things that you accomplished and what your organization currently does, I wanted to make sure that you get a chance to just, you know, talk about everything that you're accomplishing, continue to do, just give us some insight on your background and then if you could, about the Earth Organization, please. [00:00:36] Speaker B: Okay, great. My background. I have an extremely varied background. Right. That you would never think would end up with me doing what I'm doing Right. Right now. Right. Let me start from, you know, grew up in New Mexico and, and had some amazing parents. My dad owned an airline company, but small airplanes. And we used to. Our house was connected onto the airplane hangar. And he was the only company who had a contract with the Atomic Energy Commission and had. When Los Alamos was still top, top secret, his planes were the only planes that were allowed to fly in and out of that high mountain area to transport, you know, all these military generals and Oppenheimer and all these people. Right. And our house was connected onto the hangar. So I got, you know, I was really young, but I got to meet some of these people. And anyway, it was just a really, really unique childhood. [00:01:38] Speaker A: Unbelievable. And, you know, and your travels took you, you know, you're currently in California right now. And so you've always been involved in public relations. You've always been consulting, and you're the executive director now. And what I found fascinating about your background is that you've always believed in this cooperative ecology that you guys utilize at the Earth Organization. For the listeners of this program, and we'll get deeper into this. What exactly is cooperative ecology? [00:02:01] Speaker B: I'm glad you asked. That's a term that we actually coined and even trademarked. And it's a fascinating concept. It's one that most of your listeners will understand, the sort of interconnectedness of life, the mutual interdependency. But cooperative ecology is basically a study of those interconnections. And it's fascinating the deeper and deeper you look into that field of just how interdependent and mutually dependent we are with all the other life forms and the things in Our own ecosystem. Right, correct. Yeah. So whether that ecosystem is your family, your parents, your siblings, you know, your home, or, you know, for kids, their school, the community, nature, everything around them, there's this incredible interdependence. So whether you're talking about the microbes in your gut, you know, and how much are you enhancing and strengthening them and how much are they enhancing and strengthening you. [00:03:14] Speaker A: Right. [00:03:15] Speaker B: You know, and so this whole study of how, of how the world works basically, you know, is on mutual dependency and mutual support. Whether, whether an organism or person or whatever is, is actively enhancing or, and strengthening the world around him or her and, you know, or not really shows the value of that person in their own ecosystem and. Go ahead. [00:03:47] Speaker A: No, I was just saying that's amazing. [00:03:48] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a fascinating concept. You know, the more you look at it, I love getting, you know, I'm always asking people if they come across interesting interconnections to, you know, send them to me as examples. And one, one of the most beautiful ones that I recently heard about, which I love, is that a pregnant woman, the stem cells of a baby, you know, which are just incredibly powerful building blocks and they will. So here the mother is giving life to the fetus and the stem cells in the fetus will go to different areas of the mother's body that aren't doing well and will help build them up and strengthen them and make them healthier. [00:04:33] Speaker A: Oh, wow. I did not. Absolutely. Like, it's like the body already knows where the weaknesses are lying in and itself healing. It sounds like out of a sci fi movie. Right, like that. You know what I mean? Like, and here we are just functioning on a day by day basis, yet at the same time, in order for have a healthy baby, healthy childbirth, it's naturally doing that, you know. [00:04:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:52] Speaker A: Instinctively, because it knows that that's where the body needs those resources. That's amazing. [00:04:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting to me too. I mean, a completely different kind of example, but, but similar. You know, for many, many, many years, people just ignored the fact that matriarchs of elephant herds would use their trunk and sort of smell and investigate the poop of the rest of the herd. And you know, that was just kind of ignored as well. That's just what they do. But then it was found out that she's actually, she's actually smelling and perceiving what supplements, what additional minerals or vitamin. Vitamins. [00:05:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:30] Speaker B: Do they need that they're not getting? And then she'll move the herd to that area of nature where they can, you know, get more vitamin A or whatever, whatever it is that they need. I mean, it's, you know, it's just fascinating. [00:05:44] Speaker A: It's their equivalent of making sure they go to the healthy section of the grocery store, so to speak. [00:05:48] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. Wow. [00:05:49] Speaker A: Wow. That's amazing. [00:05:50] Speaker B: So, you know, it's to. The. More. I decided to create this educational program that we call a Cooperative Ecology for Kids. And the reason that we decided to do that was because I was looking at all of these different situations where you have, for example, very large chemical companies, if you will. And the majority of those people in those companies are good people. They care about their families. They're trying to get along in life, they're trying to do good. Right. And a lot of the products that come out of those companies are good products, but some of those products are really destructive. Right. And you wonder, what is this disassociation where somebody who's. Who's creating and distributing a product like that? How could they think that that's not going to come back around and cause them cancer or their kids? Cancer or their. Right, right. And so I realized in trying to resolve that or help kind of create a sea change in creating a society that's making more constructive choices, we realized that we could take this concept of cooperative ecology and really get kids to understand it. Kids, teenagers, for example, who in just a few years, they're going to be decision makers in these kinds of companies. And so I love the program that we put together on this. We have some educational materials, and it takes them through. We've got different age groups, materials for different age groups, but it takes them through a whole series of drills, a practical application to get them to really get this concept. Not that it's just some nice theory that they learn about in school. Right. But they really get how it applies to them. And here's how we do it. Within. Within these books are these drills. And the first one is make a list. And every drill is four steps, right? The first step is. And the first drill is make a list of everything your mom does for you that makes your life better, happier, or safer. Right? [00:08:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:13] Speaker B: And then step two is good. Now make a list of everything you do for your mom that makes her life better, happier or safer. Right. And you don't have to go, wow, look how much longer your mom's list is. The kids, actually, it's amazing. They immediately start. Start to get it right. [00:08:32] Speaker A: Right. [00:08:32] Speaker B: Then step three is good. Now think of something you could do for your mom that would make her Life better, happier, safer, and go do it. Right. [00:08:40] Speaker A: Absolutely right. [00:08:41] Speaker B: And then step four is good. Now step back and just take a look. Did your own life get better in any way as a result of doing that for your mom? [00:08:51] Speaker A: Okay. [00:08:51] Speaker B: Right. [00:08:52] Speaker A: Yes. [00:08:53] Speaker B: So then we do the same four steps on their dad. You know, make a list of everything your dad does for you that makes your life better, happier, safer. Make a list of everything you do for your dad that makes his life better, happier, safer. Go think of something you could do for your dad, you know, that'll make his life better, happier, safer. Go do it. And then did your own life get better as a result? Then we have them do the same four steps on at least one of their siblings. Right. That one's always really interesting. What does your older. What's your older sister do for you? [00:09:23] Speaker A: That's a loaded question. If you ever want honesty, ask a kid though, right? If you ever want something to be totally honest, always ask a kid. [00:09:31] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. It was very cute. We did that with one. You know, one little boy stands out in my mind where he was 11 years old and he could not think of anything that his sister did for him that made his life better. Right. And so on step three, you know, he decided that he would wash the dishes for her so she didn't have to do it one night. That was his step three. And when I asked him, good, did your own life get better, you know, as a result of doing that? And he said it was really nice not to have an angry sister. [00:10:03] Speaker A: See, but you know, as long as. But you still made him think, you still pushed him to try to find something out of that situation. [00:10:10] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:10:10] Speaker A: That's the most important. [00:10:12] Speaker B: Then we do the same four steps on their home. What does your home do for you that makes your life better, happier, safer, what do you do for your home that makes it a better, happier, safer place to be, etc. Then we have them do it on a teacher and then on their school. That's always really interesting. [00:10:31] Speaker A: Expanding past their circle. Right. So you're consistently like, it doesn't just stop with one because people can. They. They have to start thinking really detailed about things. [00:10:40] Speaker B: Yeah. And their school is in their ecosystem. That is a part of their life. It's one of the dynamic parts, important parts of their life. Yeah, yeah. Then we have them do it on something in the community and they can pick whatever that is. It could be a grocery store, it could be an after school program, it could be, you know, community center, it could be a church, whatever they Want and go through the same four steps with that. Then we have them go out into nature and do the same thing on something in nature. A park, a trail, you know, whatever, a lake, and do the same four steps. And then the final drill of that particular set is that we then have them go out in nature and just pick two things that are close to each other and then look at them really closely. Like, what is that tree? Can you see anything that tree is doing for those ants? And are those ants doing anything for the tree? Right. And the whole process of this, at the end of it, they really begin to get how this applies to them. Again, not just some nice theory, but actually how it applies to them and begins to see that the things they do come back around and either make their life better or worse. [00:12:00] Speaker A: Yes. And everything is really interconnected, right. So when you start from the home, you keep expanding slightly outward and then it becomes how everything impacted everything that you did. And then it makes you start thinking, okay, what does that tree, to your point, you know, how is that impacting that animal in that forest? And you know, when you, when I heard of your organization, and I say this very respectfully, people can sometimes think that people who are trying to make an ecosystem better are not realistic about the political and social dynamics that are trying to do such a thing. Right. That does not mean that there shouldn't be hunting. That does not mean that, you know, every animal in every situation is a case. It's a case by case basis. This is your field of work, not mine. But it's a very, very delicate balance that you probably have to deal with with nature, governments, you know, social, political avenues, as well as geographical locations. How do you navigate all? [00:12:53] Speaker B: Well, it is interesting, it's a really good question. The whole reason that I originally got into this field one was well, I'll get into that a little bit later because it's a super interesting story of who my co founder was. But how we navigate it is. We've got a six step standard operating procedure, okay. That, that we take any environmental situation that we did, we are interested in possibly taking on, we walk through. Right. And the first step is, you know, let's say we've been hearing about some environmental situation through the media and you know, we're all going to die next week if we don't handle this. And. Right. And just super alarmism and a lot of generalities. No solutions. The solutions are, you know, get rid of people. Right. Which is no solution at all. Yeah. So the first step of our six Step process is we research to find out first and foremost does that situation actually even exist or is it just some other thing going. Being promoted in the media? Right, absolutely, yeah. So if it does exist and it's important enough that we feel we want to take it on, then step two is we research it thoroughly to find out what is the honest to God source of the problem. And it's never what's being promoted. It's always at least somewhat different and a lot of times completely different is the actual source. Then step three is once we found the source, then we find a solution that works for everybody involved, not just the spotted owl. Right. Not just, you know, one vested interest, but what works for everybody. People, jobs, economy, business and industry, as well as nature. [00:14:45] Speaker A: For sure. For sure, yeah. [00:14:47] Speaker B: Then step four. [00:14:48] Speaker A: It's amazing. [00:14:49] Speaker B: Sorry. [00:14:49] Speaker A: These are amazing steps, by the way. Amazing. [00:14:51] Speaker B: Cool, cool. Yeah, they're just very logical. It's just very step by step logical. Right. So step four then is we then get that solution implemented. And depending on what the situation is, we either implement it ourselves, as in this, you know, this whole COECO education program is based on a lot of research done about like, how can we actually get more people engaged in understanding and making better decisions environmentally. It's very fundamental, but. Or in getting a solution implemented, we may get it into the hands of another organization that will do so competently so we can go on and do the next, you know, to the next issue. [00:15:32] Speaker A: Right, right. [00:15:32] Speaker B: Then step five is we create educational materials based on whatever that situation was to create, you know, based on all the lessons learned from steps one to four. Right. And then step six is just rinse, repeat, go find the next environmental situation and put it through the same set of steps. The whole reason I got involved in this area in the first place is because when I stepped back and looked at what was going on, there was so much false data being purveyed, there was so much alarmism. [00:16:07] Speaker A: Unbelievable. [00:16:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And so much like, you know, people with the best of intentions just listening to the media, just listening to, you know, being kind of led by the nose in a lot of ways down pathways, thinking they were doing the right thing and then trying to implement solutions that either weren't going to solve it at all and usually ended up being the next problem you had to solve for sure. Right. So it's, it's. Yeah, I just saw so much of that going on that, you know, I decided to. Decided to get into the field. [00:16:44] Speaker A: Well, that's amazing. It's amazing. And so I didn't mean to cut you off, but it seems like, you know, I can only imagine, you know, what works well in one state, and this is just in 50 states in the country. Right. But what works well in Michigan would not work well in Oklahoma would not work well in Boston, Massachusetts. You know, there could be a particular species that you have to navigate. State, local, even federal lands. All these things have to be encompassed to make a decision. And this research, I'm imagining can take quite some time. [00:17:12] Speaker B: Absolutely. It absolutely, absolutely can, depending on the complexity. I mean, sometimes we'll take something on where it's just like, you know, things fall into place really fast, but other, other times it takes years and years and years to walk through those steps. Definitely. So, yeah, it's fascinating. And every, you know, every different area tends to be quite, you know, quite complex with a lot of different factors. Particularly when you're looking for solutions that work for everyone. Right. Then it. Then there's a lot of different factors to look at to figure it out. But it's fun. It's really fun, you know, and one of the things that I have found that just continues to amaze me is that there's always a solution. [00:17:56] Speaker A: That is very true. That is 100% true. You're absolutely correct. [00:18:01] Speaker B: So it's never like an impossible thing to fix. And it's always a solution that can be implemented, you know, not some big thing that's going to destroy mankind or wipe out some industry or something like that. There are solutions that. That can be brought to bear that do the do work for everyone. [00:18:22] Speaker A: Well, you know, obviously there are industries that are heavily dependent on the status quo, and that's. And we are dependent on them as people as well, too. There's a great show on Paramount. It's called Landman. I don't know if you've seen it or not. It's Billy Bob Thornton. So he's talking to. He's an oil executive, kind of like the field operations manager, so to speak. And then there's a woman that drives an electrical vehicle and she's, you know, they have contrasting personalities. She's the attorney that came from out of state, and she's saying, I don't understand this industry. And then he gives a really good speech in one of the episodes about how you have to drill to get these electric batteries. The oil's powering the wind turbines. It's in your toothpaste, it's in your trash bag. And he goes down a laundry list of items of everyday use, and he's sitting Back and saying, well, you want my industry to go the way of the dodo, so to speak, yet all the things you utilize on a day by day basis are directly related to my industry. [00:19:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's utterly naive and unworkable to, you know, be at least so far to be trying to take out the oil industry. It's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous. But there are other solutions. I'll give you a great example. [00:19:29] Speaker A: I'd love to hear it. [00:19:30] Speaker B: Yeah. During the BP oil spill, which was as bad as it was, it was way worse than what the media was. [00:19:38] Speaker A: I've heard that, I have heard that. [00:19:40] Speaker B: It was really incredible. [00:19:43] Speaker A: That's crazy. [00:19:44] Speaker B: So, so I went into the Gulf states and I spent a bunch of time there and I was looking for, I wasn't looking for a single solution to clean up the oil. Right. I was looking for any solutions that would work that we could advocate for and help these companies who were really having trouble with a very, very corrupt EPA at that time. Very corrupt. And, you know, and, and so all these solutions, there were over 100,000 solutions that were offered up. I mean, you know, everything from mushrooms that soak up the oil, you know, to God knows, I mean, it was just like unbelievable, the tsunami. But most people didn't know that. There's something called the NCP list, the National Contingency Plan list. And for you to be used, even to be considered, for your product to be considered during and when an actual spill happens, you have to already be on that list. If you're not on the list, you could have the greatest product in the world. [00:20:55] Speaker A: Wow. [00:20:55] Speaker B: They won't even look at it. Right. So, yeah, so, so there were at that time about, I think about a hundred products on that list. So as soon as I found out about that list and that nothing else could be considered, then it was a matter of vetting the products that were on that list to see which ones are the best ones, which ones could we advocate for? Right, right. So, long story short, and I have this very, very simple, logical list of guidelines of here's the kind of products we're looking for and have to have these basic guidelines. One, it has to be something that has, it's a company that has the manufacturing capability to produce, you know, what's needed to handle this. [00:21:38] Speaker A: Absolutely without question. [00:21:40] Speaker B: It can't be somebody with a couple of gallons in their garage, you know, that they made up. [00:21:45] Speaker A: Unfortunately, those people exist. [00:21:46] Speaker B: It had, you know, what was that? [00:21:48] Speaker A: When money gets passed out, unfortunately those bad actors start Rearing their heads, too. [00:21:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other, you know, the other things. Some of the other things on our. Our list of common sense guidelines is that it couldn't be toxic, you know, couldn't make things worse. [00:22:03] Speaker A: Correct. [00:22:06] Speaker B: It had to be affordable. It had to be something that actually was a viable, you know, workable product. It had to be. It had to have a track record of success, just some common sense basics like that. And it couldn't. It had to actually solve clean, you know, clean the oil up. It couldn't be something where it just transferred the problem somewhere else. [00:22:29] Speaker A: Correct. [00:22:30] Speaker B: You know, I wasn't interested in sponges, soaked up the oil but then transferred it to another place. [00:22:35] Speaker A: Correct, right. [00:22:36] Speaker B: Where it would just make that area more toxic. So much to my shock, there was only one product on that whole list that actually fit all our guidelines. [00:22:47] Speaker A: One product. Oh, my goodness. [00:22:48] Speaker B: One product. Right. But the good news was that there was one product. There was at least one, right? [00:22:55] Speaker A: Yes. [00:22:56] Speaker B: And it was this phenomenal product called Oil Spill Eaters 2 O S E2. And it was something. It's enzymatic. It acts. It. It does exactly what nature does to clean up an oil spill. But whereas nature would take like over a century or more to clean up that spill, this could have cleaned it up in the matter of a few weeks. I mean, it was just unbelievably effective. So then we had to, then to find out why was the EPA playing every dirty trick in the book to prevent it from being utilized? [00:23:32] Speaker A: I can only imagine. [00:23:33] Speaker B: And why was the. The only product that the EPA was allowing to be used is this product called Corexit, which is unbelievably toxic. It's 50 times. When you combine it with the oil, it makes the oil 50 times as toxic as if you'd done nothing. Yeah. It causes mutations, it causes cancer, it causes birth defects. I mean, it's just this horrifically toxic, terrible thing. But the only benefit, the one benefit it had for the EPA and for the oil companies is that within 30 minutes of coming in contact with the oil, it sinks beneath the surface where you can't see it. [00:24:17] Speaker A: So. No. Yeah. It's like cleaning your room before your parent comes in. You didn't actually. You didn't fix the problem. Right. You just shoved the clothes. Right, Right. [00:24:24] Speaker B: The place got shoved out of the. [00:24:26] Speaker A: That's all she wrote. Just shoved them under the bed. Don't look. Don't worry. Yeah. Wow. It was it. [00:24:32] Speaker B: But this made it so much worse because when the oil's on the surface, at least you can gather up a portion of it or of it, soak up some of it and move it, you know, move it to landfill or something. But this stuff makes it 50 times as toxic and then spreads it throughout, takes it off the top, spreads throughout the entire water column. And so the amount of wildlife that were annihilated. Right. And then. Oh, my God, it was just such a horrible, horrible scene. [00:25:03] Speaker A: I remember about that as a kid. I remember the incident as a kid. [00:25:06] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. It was bad. We never were able to get the EPA to allow it to be used on the spill. But interestingly, we wrote a paper on it. Yeah, we wrote a paper on it. We compared it to this other. To correx it, showing how, you know, here's this great solution and how about we use this instead? And that paper has been a part of helping to get that technology now used in 70 other countries around the world to clean up massive oil spills. Right. [00:25:41] Speaker A: That's amazing. That's, you know, that's got to be a tricky one to navigate because nobody wants to have, you know, it's such a booming industry. It has so many different jobs to it. And, you know, ultimately, usually you find out in government, and this is certainly not a political show, usually the person running a section of government used to work for a large corporation themselves and just work came across the street. Right. So now you have kind of what you call a conflict of interest, where you're not really trying to go after your friend or your former board member, and it gets very difficult to kind of police yourself in that regard. [00:26:13] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, this particular, this particular event was interesting in terms of our involvement because we're not anti oil companies. [00:26:23] Speaker A: Right, right. [00:26:24] Speaker B: We wanted to find a solution that worked for them as well. Right. Because without that, it wasn't getting. It wasn't getting it implemented. Interestingly, there were BP scientists that were shown this technology and they got really interested in it and wanted to use it, but the EPA wouldn't let them. [00:26:44] Speaker A: That's incredible. That's absolutely like. That's insane to me. [00:26:48] Speaker B: Yeah, it was insane. But follow the money, because there's another oil company that owned Corexit over, you know, the past, since the Exxon Valdez, they had managed to get the EPA to allow them to have a total monopoly on oil spill cleanup. So all oil companies will stockpile this. This horrible product, but because it's stockpiled when a spill happens, that's all they've got. [00:27:17] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:27:18] Speaker B: And that's all the EPA will allow to be used. So why would they stockpile anything else? [00:27:24] Speaker A: Unbelievable. [00:27:24] Speaker B: Right? But, yeah, but the, you know, then, then we even had to research and find out where, where was the money changing hands? And it was definitely changing hands. [00:27:33] Speaker A: I mean, I mean, you know, it, it's definitely, and not only that though, I'm sure that there's some very powerful lobbyists involved with that particular product and other products as well too. Because when you watch the news and you, I mean there's lots of smart people far smarter than me. I'm just a host on, you know, on this podcast and get your time. But it would be, it'd be naive of anybody to suggest that all of the people who are smart who plan for these particular events don't have solutions that they plan five, 10 years advance or a very severe situation. Instead of saying this particular item works and then somebody stonewalling it, whether it's a senator, whether it's at the federal level, the state level, it gets very, very nuanced when you realize the inner workings of the quote unquote, machine at work, so to speak. [00:28:14] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true. [00:28:16] Speaker A: That's terrible. That's really terrible. [00:28:18] Speaker B: But it's, I think it's interesting viewpoint and kind of unique in the environmental world for the Earth Organization to have this viewpoint that we, you know, we want to help business and industry. We want, you know, mankind is basically good and primarily wants to do the right thing. If they don't know how to do the right thing or they don't have the resources to do the right thing, then you end up with a lot of bad choices and you know, and destructive environmental effects get created. [00:28:53] Speaker A: Right. [00:28:55] Speaker B: You know, you asked me kind of how I got started in this and let me tell you about my co founder because such, he was such an amazing person. That's right. That's right. So Lawrence owned a wildlife preserve in South Africa and he was world renowned for, for two things primarily. The first was that he was the man that went into Baghdad at the beginning of the war in 2003 and rescued the Baghdad Zoo. So when everybody else was, yeah, when everybody else was fleeing, when the tanks were rolling into the coalition forces were rolling into Baghdad, they couldn't believe it. But Lawrence managed to get into Baghdad and he ended up staying there for six months in the middle of this war zone protecting and rebuilding the, the habitat for this, the Baghdad Zoo. [00:29:48] Speaker A: That's unbelievable. [00:29:48] Speaker B: And it was, it's an incredible story. I highly recommend the best selling book that he wrote about it called Babylon's ark. And you can get it on. You can get it on Amazon, and it's just a fabulous story. And in the middle of that, two months after he first got there, four of the top environmental groups in the world showed up to help. And even with the best of intentions, they didn't know what to do. So they just become. They just became a problem. [00:30:18] Speaker A: Oh, my. [00:30:19] Speaker B: And the only thing they did that was positive is they brought in a truckload of supplies for the animals. And so when they first arrived, the zoo staff were, you know, practically dancing in the street. Within four days after they'd been there, everybody wished they had never come because they were there just to get media to show their millions of members that they were there. They raised millions of dollars off the back of the incident, and not a dollar of that went to the zoo. And what Lawrence was trying to get done, they took credit for what he was doing. And then they left. [00:30:54] Speaker A: Right, once the cameras left. Right, once the cameras left. [00:30:57] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So he was pretty disappointed in what he saw. And at that time, I was the executive director of a good sized management consulting company in California, and he and I were good friends. And so he asked me if I would help him start a nonprofit that would be dedicated to finding and implementing real solutions to, you know, to environmental issues and conservation issues. So that's. That's where we started. [00:31:25] Speaker A: Wonderful. [00:31:25] Speaker B: But another. Another thing that he was known for, which was just amazing, is that he had rescued a herd of wild elephants that were going to be put down. Yeah, they were traumatized as a herd herd. It was the remnants of two herds that had been culled and, you know, killed and sold off for circuses and that sort of thing. And so they hated humans, and they were tromping around their area of Africa and, you know, it being very, very dangerous, turning over jeeps and tromping through villages and stuff. Right. So one day Lawrence got a call from a friend saying, look there, this herd of troublesome, you know, troublesome elephants, and we're going to put them down. But we understand that you wanted to repopulate your preserve in your area with elephant. You know, if you want them, we'll give them to you. You just have to pay for their shipping. [00:32:27] Speaker A: Not exactly sending a UPS package. Right. [00:32:31] Speaker B: So there were seven of them. Seven elephants. [00:32:33] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. [00:32:34] Speaker B: And so, long story long and beautiful story short, he brought. Got them to the game reserve. But this story is so incredible because he hired this elephant expert who turned out not to be much of an expert on elephants. Right. But he hired her, and so she told him, okay, you have to put them into a huge corral, electric fence, cut down all the trees. So they can't. Because they knew that these elephants knew how to push a tree over onto an electric fence and shorted out. Yeah. So. So she came and she directed them. They built this huge corral before the elephants arrived, and there was one big tree in the middle of it. She said, no, you don't have to cut that one down. That's too big. They can't push that over. And so they get them into this corral, and she said, you have to leave them here for. For at least three months and let them just acclimate to the area, you know, make sure they have food, but otherwise leave them completely alone with a maclepate. And then you can. Then you'll be able to let them out into the larger game preserve. So they arrive this one night, the next morning, they're gone. And it turned out that carry the tree. They went after that one, they pushed it over, shorted out the fence, escaped. And then, get this. They went to the outer game preserve, which is about 26 km, right? They went there that was also had electric fence, and they couldn't find any. They didn't have any trees near the fence to short it out. So they traced back a mile into the game preserve to find the green box that sourced the electricity to the fence, and they stomped it into the ground and they escaped. [00:34:21] Speaker A: That's how much they knew. This is some Jurassic park stuff, to be honest with you. Like, that's something you just like legitimately, like, I'm in my head, like, oh, they really don't do that. It's like, no, they knew exactly where to look for. They knew exactly they had been, you. [00:34:33] Speaker B: Know, they could must perceive the electricity or something, you know, the flow or something, that they could find it. But the story gets even better. So it took them three days to find them, and they were headed straight back in the direction of their old home, right where they had been brought from. And this helicopter pilot managed to, you know, herd them back, got them turned and herd them back. And they got them into the now heavily fortified treeless corral, Right. And Lawrence fired the elephant expert. She'd been wrong on a bunch of different things, right? And he just went, you know, I've got to get these elephants. Because he was told by other game rangers, if they get out again, we're putting them down. They're too dangerous. [00:35:15] Speaker A: Right? [00:35:16] Speaker B: So he just went, you know, I'm Their last hope here. And they have to learn to trust at least one person and settle down. So he set up a tent and a little camp right next to the corral. And he lived with them 24 hours a day and just went, I'm just going to live here with these elephants just out of their reach. Right. But until they settle down. And for three weeks, they were charging around and, oh, my God, they're huge. Right. [00:35:47] Speaker A: Couldn't even imagine. Couldn't even imagine. [00:35:49] Speaker B: So he would. He would walk around the outside of the corral again, far enough away where they couldn't get to him. And he would sing, you know, and just talk to them and stuff. And people. People would ask him, well, what did you talk to them about? And he'd say, you know, mathematics, Bob Dylan, whatever came to mind. After three weeks, all of a sudden, he described it as though somebody had just turned the hostility light off. It just went boom. And the matriarch, they calmed down, and the matriarch came over to the fence and reached her trunk out to him through the fence, and he backed off, of course. Right. Because before she would have got him and pulled him in and killed him. [00:36:29] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. [00:36:29] Speaker B: So he backed off. So she walked around the corral a little bit more, and then she came back again, reached out to him again, he backed off the second time. Same thing the third time. He just stood his ground, and she just stroked his chest with her trunk. [00:36:45] Speaker A: Like, you finally get me. You finally get me. I'm finally comfortable with you. You finally understood where I was coming from. Where you can't. Yeah, right. You calmed the area. Like you decompressed the situation. That's amazing. [00:36:57] Speaker B: So he immediately went, okay. You know, again, the elephant expert had said, leave them there for three months. He went, no, we've done what we can do. Immediately let them out into the larger preserv. And they went straight back to the electric fence around the, you know, the large preserve. And they walked the entire 26 kilometers with the matriarch's trunk three inches below the electric wire, looking for a break in the fence. Right. And when they couldn't find one, that was it. They never tried to break out again. Yeah. So. [00:37:31] Speaker A: And that's the part of understanding the environment that's around you. Yeah. [00:37:36] Speaker B: Story gets better. [00:37:37] Speaker A: I can't wait to hear it. [00:37:38] Speaker B: So two weeks later, Lawrence and his wife were. They had this charming thatched roof cottage on the. On the game preserve. And they were in bed, and they heard something on the roof. And Lawrence thought it must be A leopard. So middle of the night, you know, he very carefully opens the door to see what's going on. And the whole herd was standing there. And what they'd heard is that they were eating a thatch out of the roof, right? [00:38:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:05] Speaker B: But they had come to see him. That's amazing. The matriarch had been pregnant when the herd arrived, and she'd had her baby, and she pushed her baby in front of her to show Lawrence her new baby. Right. [00:38:24] Speaker A: That's insane. That is absolutely. This hostile animal that was close to getting put down wants to show off her baby in front of Lawrence. [00:38:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:31] Speaker A: That's incredible. [00:38:33] Speaker B: So the story, it just got better and better and better over time. It got so that every single time he went away on a trip, the whole herd would magically show up at his house the night he returned. Every single time. I saw it twice myself, because we take people on safaris as a fundraising mechanism and as educational mechanism for. Right. Once a year, we take a group of people down on. On safari. So two of the times when we were at. At, you know, on their preserve, I would have. Lawrence would have been out of town, and I would arrive a few days early, and he would come back on the same day. And lo and behold, you know, a few hours later, here would come the herd. [00:39:17] Speaker A: That's ugly. Waiting for his return to say hi to their friends. [00:39:21] Speaker B: Incredible. [00:39:22] Speaker A: That's amazing. [00:39:23] Speaker B: One time he missed his flight, and they came as far as the garden gate and then perceived that he wasn't there and left. And the next night when he arrived, they came back. So then the story is, like, just so amazing because it gets even better from here. Sort of. Sort of it gets more interesting, let me put it that way. Lawrence passed away in 2012, and he was 300 miles away from the game preserve. And the elephants were about 12 miles from the house, and they perceived that he died, and they walked in mourning to the house. And they stayed around the house for several hours in obvious distress. And then they did something that Lawrence told me a herd will do when a member of the herd dies. They will go into mourning, and they will. Just for a few days, they just disappear. These gigantic, huge creatures, the game rangers, they just disappear into the bush, right? Game rangers can't find them. And after a few days, you know, they come out. Life goes on. But he said every year they'll come back to where the elephant died and they'll, like, move the bones around, and it's almost like a ceremony or something, right? And they'll do that year after year, around the same time that the. Yeah. And until the bones are just dust. [00:40:49] Speaker A: Correct. [00:40:50] Speaker B: For four years the herd returned to his house on the anniversary of his death. [00:40:56] Speaker A: The fact that they even know that that time was even eclipsed. Right. How like how. You know what, how do they have respective time that they have a good, you know, they have a time period. They know that that's the anniversary of his passing. That is incredible. [00:41:08] Speaker B: Isn't that? It's incredible. [00:41:10] Speaker A: Incredible. [00:41:12] Speaker B: If your viewers want to hear the read the whole story. He wrote another best selling book called the Elephant Whisperer. That's what his publishers wanted him to call it. He was very humble and he went like they were the ones doing the whispering. I just listened. Right. But the publisher went no, this is a great title. You have to call it the Elephant Whisperer. And the media actually dubbed him that. [00:41:36] Speaker A: That's amazing. [00:41:37] Speaker B: But the story is told beautifully in that book. The whole relationship and how it came to be and you know, how it developed. But it was really, it's such a measure of the man too that is. [00:41:50] Speaker A: Who goes into Baghdad to save the ant. I mean, you know, because I think oftentimes when we see a cataclysmic event or live, you know, something, you know, very, very large that takes place. We're not thinking about the environmental impact. Right. We think about the human impact obviously is. Is very important. But then, you know, when the cameras leave or what you're looking at the sustainable ecosystem around that. And so. Yeah, that's where your organization comes in. And so, you know, and continues to do. One of the things I did have a question about which I found completely fascinating was that you find water resources in areas that don't that on paper should not have it available to get it. That's incredible. Can you talk about that? [00:42:29] Speaker B: Yeah, would love to. Would love to. Again that remember the six step process of how we, you know, how we take something on and research it and find the solution. If you look at, if you look at a map of the world showing the deserts and. Right. That over the past 50 years there's been an incredible increase in deserts and they call it desertification. As deserts are expanding. It has to do with a wide variety of things. You know, it has to do with a wide variety of things. A lot of it has to do with over chemicals, you know, too many chemicals in farming. [00:43:09] Speaker A: Yes. [00:43:09] Speaker B: That are just creating dust bowls. [00:43:12] Speaker A: I didn't even think about that. [00:43:14] Speaker B: Yeah. So that is a major, major source of it. [00:43:19] Speaker A: Yes. [00:43:19] Speaker B: So that has to get handled if you look at a map, you'll go like, oh, my God, around the world. This, you know, this is a real situation. And so water is becoming. I'm sure you've heard water is becoming, you know, being fought over. A lot of the wars going on in the Middle east and that sort of thing been fought over water. Right. Not. Not religion. Water farmers in the American Southwest and ranchers are having trouts all the time. Terrible time. Terrible time. Yeah. [00:43:50] Speaker A: Yes. They had to fly water into the Arizona, you know, to the. To the Grand Canyon because the water levels were getting so low. Right. You don't hear. [00:43:56] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [00:43:57] Speaker A: You know what I mean? [00:43:57] Speaker B: Yeah. So. So we started researching this and we came across. I came across online this theory that I immediately went, oh, my God, if this is true, without any exaggeration whatsoever, this is the. The solution to the world's access to fresh water problems. [00:44:16] Speaker A: Right, right, right. Yes. [00:44:18] Speaker B: It was absolutely phenomenal. And so I hired some scientists and we started researching this to see was this true. And the more we've looked, the more it really looks like it's. It is absolutely true. And the more we've applied it and the solutions, it's been phenomenal. But let me back up a little bit. I'll explain what this theory is. So if you ask them, by far, the majority of scientists, this question, if 5 billion years ago, this planet was hot molten lava, where did all that water come from? That covers over 70% of the planet deeply. Where did that come from? They will tell you that it all came from meteors from outer space. Okay, correct response. That look on your face was. The correct response is like, that makes no sense whatsoever. Just looking at the volume of it. Right. It just makes no sense. So back in the 1930s, there was a man by the name of Stephen Reese. And Riis was a geologist. He was. Before Hoover became president, his family gained their wealth from mining. And as you go deeper and deeper into the planet, the increased pressure will actually prevent. There's a demarcation point beyond which water from the surface can't trickle down. It doesn't matter whether it's stopped by hard rock or not. You can't go past that point because the pressure just keeps, you know, prevents it. So they were drilling these mines that were far below that demarcation point. [00:45:49] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:45:50] Speaker B: And they were finding. And they were these extremely valuable silver mines. They'd hid into some rocks and water would start pouring out and it would drown out the entire mind before they could even pump it out. So he started. He Went, you know, this one paradigm of this all came from outer space, you know, doesn't make sense in that paradigm either, because it can't, you know, can't get to this surface. [00:46:15] Speaker A: Correct, exactly. Exactly. [00:46:17] Speaker B: Yeah. So he actually postulated, if you will, and it appears to be completely, completely valid, that the planet actually makes water and it makes it in the magma in the lava area right beneath the surface. Right, yeah. And the intense heat and pressure creates a synthesis between hydrogen and oxygen, and then it turns it into gaseous form. And because of all the pressure, it then pushes it up through any cracks or fissures that it can find in the Earth's surface to the surface. And once. Yeah, once it hits the surface, then it goes into what we all learned about in high school. The hydrologic cycle driven by the sun evaporates, comes down in snow and rain, trickles through loose soil, down into shallow aquifers, and round and round it goes. [00:47:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:10] Speaker B: But there are just everywhere these cracks. [00:47:15] Speaker A: And fissures, enough of it to take place the entire time that it brings that much water to the surface. [00:47:21] Speaker B: That's right. And a lot of these cracks and fissures don't come all the way to the surface, but they come close enough to the surface to be able to access them. And interestingly, he postulated from all of his research, and it has since been proven to be true with what we call remote sensing equipment, there is literally five times as much fresh water in that. Accessible in that area of the planet as there is in the oceans on the surface. [00:47:51] Speaker A: Really? [00:47:52] Speaker B: Five times as much as the oceans. Right, right. So it turns out that there's never been a scarcity of fresh water on the planet. There's only been a scarcity of the knowledge of how to find these fissures and cracks that are bringing it up. Right. And that water that's never been on the surface before is. Tends to be extremely good quality water because it's not polluted. [00:48:18] Speaker A: Correct, correct. That's what I was about to say. It's never been really. It's. There's been nothing that else has had contact with it. It has no environmental or human pollutions into it. That's amazing. [00:48:27] Speaker B: So it, you know, now if it's coming up through a salt dome or something like that, it might be too saline or, you know, you have to, you have to. It's not all just pure, pure, pure correct drinking water. But what is phenomenal is very long story short, because we've been working on this for nine years now. [00:48:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:48:48] Speaker B: Is that actually 10 I just realized is that we own the Earth Organization owns a proprietary technology that makes it possible to find those fishers. [00:49:00] Speaker A: That's insane. [00:49:01] Speaker B: So we can go out into the desert, right. In an area where other geologists will insist no water can be found and they fail to do so repeatedly. And we can't find water that's not there. Right. But if there are any of these fissures or cracks at an accessible depth, we can find them with 100% success. [00:49:26] Speaker A: That's amazing. That is absolutely amazing. [00:49:28] Speaker B: Yeah. So we've been doing projects all throughout the American Southwest for farmers and ranchers, finding water for them and, and for. [00:49:39] Speaker A: Those farmers, this has to be an absolute godsend. [00:49:41] Speaker B: It absolutely is. It absolutely is. There's a project that we just. The drilling hasn't happened yet, but we have such a success, we have 100% success rate, so. Which is completely unheard of in the, in the drilling for water industry. It's usually between 40, 50, maybe 60%. But what that means is that 40 to 60% of the time the landowner, the farmer, the rancher drills a very expensive dry borehole and they get nothing for it, but they still have to pay for the hole that the driller drilled or they'll hit into water. Either that's inadequate, it's not enough for what they need, or they hit saline water, which is bad as having a dry borehole because they can't use it. Right. So our tech is so precise and it takes, you know, it's a very, very in depth process, but it's so precise that when we're done with our analysis of a property, we can literally pinpoint for a driller, don't drill 20ft away over there, drill right here. [00:50:49] Speaker A: Yes. [00:50:49] Speaker B: And we can tell them precisely how deep to drill to hit the water. We can estimate the volume that they're going to get. [00:50:58] Speaker A: Unbelievable. [00:50:58] Speaker B: Right. And we can tell them before they start drilling if it's saline or not. So it takes all the risk, all. [00:51:05] Speaker A: The risk, all the guesswork and tells them exactly, pinpointed location, where it's at. That is amazing. [00:51:12] Speaker B: It is, it is just the importance of it can't be overstated. And it is so thrilling every single time. You know, I started to tell you where we finished the analysis on a property just a couple of weeks ago in Arizona for a ranch. The manager of the ranch was desperate for water, more water. Absolutely skeptical, you know, because she'd had three other hydrogeologists come in and go, no, you know, you can't, you have to truck Your water in no water here. And we, but, but I, I talked her into, you know, having us do this. [00:51:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:51:46] Speaker B: And she was hoping against all hope that she could get 60 gallons per minute because that would have, that would ref. Big reservoir that she's got a reservoir pondage and it would have solved their problems. Plus it would have been enough to completely re restore a habitat of about 20 miles from her ranch down to a lake where spillover from that pond used to spill over and created, you know, habitat for the wildlife and the free range cattle and everything. [00:52:18] Speaker A: That's amazing. [00:52:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Over the past six years it's gone so dry that the, that the thing had totally dried up. Right. Anyway, we found two sites on her property for, for the driller to drill. We told her exactly how deep and we know that she's going to get at least 400 to 600 gallons per minute. [00:52:39] Speaker A: That's insane. Yeah, that's, that's absolutely incredible. That's absolutely, you guys are absolutely, this, I mean this is the reason why I started this show was because like you don't see commercials about organizations like this. You don't see, you know, there's, you have to be able to talk to people like yourself to know that things like this are available. And when you hear about the Earth organization, you know, I, I, I'll just call it for what it is. You people think of tree hugging, right? Like, oh, they're earthy organization. They are people who eat. You know, I'm saying that very respectfully. Right. It's not. [00:53:09] Speaker B: No, I totally understand. It's white. [00:53:12] Speaker A: Yeah. People would say that not knowing that I am helping the farmer, I am helping the rancher, I am finding water resources. We do work with the oil industry to know that they do have a value commodity, but they also have contingency plans in place for cleanup and environmental and business and jobs and creation. And you balance all that immaculately. It's amazing. I'm still stunned. I'm hearing about this. [00:53:35] Speaker B: Oh, that's great. That's great. Well, I have to tell you, we need help. We need help. We need, we need, you know, we have different levels of membership and donations. Yeah, we're a non profit and we, you know, we really, really need a lot more support to be able to expand these programs that we're doing and our work. But I, but it's, I just, I'm so proud of the work that we're doing and I know Lawrence would be so proud to see, you know, what we're doing in his name and and so please, you know, if any of your viewers want to get involved and help support us. We're looking for volunteers. We're also looking for, you know, more, more donations and members. [00:54:22] Speaker A: I think one of the most incredible things was, you know, to be able to actually have time out of your schedule with the. It's still, you know, I could, I feel like in an hour I still haven't done justice to what your organization does, what your accomplishments are and what you're going to continue to do. And so I will certainly make sure that when this episode comes out that it's promoted to the best of its ability, that there's a link to your organization and that the clips, you know, reflect exactly what your work and what you do. Because you know, at the end of the day, no matter what walk of life you come from, you do have to live here. Right. And you'd have to. We're a shared space. [00:54:55] Speaker B: Right. [00:54:55] Speaker A: Regardless of whatever people feel about certain things, you know, you do have to breathe the same air as me. You know what I mean? So we do. We have to breathe the same air. [00:55:03] Speaker B: Exactly. And our kids, you know, are all, we want them all to survive and thrive and you know, and do even better than we've done. [00:55:14] Speaker A: That's amazing work. So just real quick, I always ask this of every guest. The Earth Organization, where can people obviously they don't need the show, but for the purpose of this episode, where can they find Barbara Wiseman and the work that you do? [00:55:26] Speaker B: They should go to our website. It's at. It's not www it's HTTPs Colon. Backslash. Backslash. The typical start. Right. And then the. Don't forget the word. The theearth organization.org. [00:55:40] Speaker A: Okay. [00:55:40] Speaker B: Yeah. So the Earth Organization. [00:55:43] Speaker A: Yeah. I loved going to the website by the way too. You know, I'm a huge fan of reading history. The world around me and our world is much bigger than the. In the street we drive down and the billboards that we see and our day to day, you know, activities. It can get very narrow foot. The world really, truly is and you've opened up my eyes to everything that's available to look at and I'm very grateful for this opportunity. [00:56:04] Speaker B: Thank you, Rashad. Thank you so much. Why? Just, you know, I, you know, I think the most important message that I would give your listeners is it's so important to get curious. [00:56:16] Speaker A: Yes. [00:56:16] Speaker B: It's so important to look for yourself and not just listen because there's so much false data out there. [00:56:22] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:56:23] Speaker B: You know, you know, I talked about at the beginning of the show, like how much alarmism I was seeing. It's not that there aren't very serious environmental situations going on that need to be handled, but they can be handled. [00:56:36] Speaker A: Right. [00:56:36] Speaker B: But people have to step up and do something. Right, Right. And. But there are solutions, and they're not painful solutions. Yeah, right. They're real solutions that work for everyone, that make things better or at least don't make things worse. You know, unless somebody really has destructive, purposefully destructive intentions. [00:56:55] Speaker A: Correct. [00:56:56] Speaker B: Our solutions aren't going to work for them. [00:56:58] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:56:59] Speaker B: Those are the ones that complain bitterly, you know, because it's making things better. [00:57:04] Speaker A: Yeah, but it's weird. Those people are strange, and that's why they're not guests on this show. There's a reason why. [00:57:09] Speaker B: And that's a good thing. That's a good thing. [00:57:11] Speaker A: I have no interest in that. So. But I've always been a curious person. And this is obviously the manifestation of curiosity which. Which flies to randomness from nothing, whether it's a business organ owner, whether it's a member of the military, whether it's an Earth environment organization such as yours. This is why I created this show, to be able to, you know, bring these things to light and be able to be more educated and ultimately be a better person of this Earth, to be a better steward of the environment around me. So I want to thank you for that. I'm very appreciative. [00:57:39] Speaker B: Oh, Rashad, thank you so much. Thanks for having me on. I really. It's been great. [00:57:44] Speaker A: This is. This is top of the food chain for me, so I'm very appreciative. Thank you. Barbara Weissman. [00:57:48] Speaker B: Oh, that's great. Well, you'll have to join us on one of our eco safaris to Africa. [00:57:54] Speaker A: Sign me up. Sign this guy up. No questions asked. You have my number. You have my email address. You don't have to ask. I don't like. Sign me up, please. [00:58:06] Speaker B: Well, my goodness. Well, we've got one happening. Our next one is in. In May next year, 2026. [00:58:13] Speaker A: Okay. We'll be. We will absolutely be in touch, man. That's. [00:58:16] Speaker B: That's fantastic. Good. [00:58:18] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:58:19] Speaker B: We got a few more places in the, you know, in the group to fill, so we love to have you. [00:58:26] Speaker A: That would be on my bucket. I mean, this is. This is incredible. Just thinking about that. We'll be talking off camera, but sign me up, please. [00:58:32] Speaker B: Sounds good. [00:58:34] Speaker A: Thank you. I'm really appreciative. I could talk for days. I'm the kid that the teacher's always told to shut up, by the way. So this is great. Just keeping it real. [00:58:41] Speaker B: And I hope you didn't follow their instructions clearly. [00:58:44] Speaker A: I didn't. [00:58:45] Speaker B: Except to listen. Listen. But you're a good listener as well. [00:58:49] Speaker A: I'm so grateful. Thank you, Barbara. [00:58:51] Speaker B: Thanks. [00:58:51] Speaker A: Bye. Bye. [00:58:52] Speaker B: Bye, Rashad.