Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back, everyone, to the Tron podcast. This is your host, Rashad Woods. Thank you for tuning in today. I have a very special guest. One of the more interesting careers that I've ever had a chance to actually hear about. She's a worm advocate. That's more interesting when you get to really hear the details of it. A yoga, laughter advocate, entrepreneur right outside of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Kathy Nesbit. Thank you so much for joining.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: I'm excited to be here. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, I don't want to. It's, you know, this is what the randomness of nothing is all about is to talk to people who have fascinating careers, things that they dove into and want to share with others. And you in particular. This is one of the most interesting ones that I've ever had a chance to really hear about. I want to leave a time to you to talk about exactly what your story is, please.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Yeah, so as mentioned, I'm located just north of Toronto, largest city in Canada. And in 2002, our landfill filled up and we had nowhere to put our garbage. Whoops. I mean, second largest country in the world.
Big problem. Big smelly problem.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Oh, my God. That's a health issue so badly.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: I'm sorry. But here we go. I know you're in Michigan. We started to export our garbage to Michigan.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: I remember that. I remember that. Yeah, I do remember.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Thankfully we found a place in our large country.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I was in college at the time, so I wasn't really like, you know, in tuned with that particular situation, but I would hear remnants of it, you know, so that's a terrible situation. And it had to been a shock to people to actually have that happen.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Well, you know, the challenge is that most people are not aware what happens to our garbage when we put it at the curb. The magic truck comes along and it goes away, so it becomes not our problem anymore. It is, because it's a big problem.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: There's only one planet, one environment, you know, and, you know, like not. So just quickly to talk about the impact of this, that I'm doing the indoor composting with worms. I find that, you know, I'm not shaming the people. So when I, when I, I think, like, shame on us as Canadians for shipping our garbage out of the country. And here we go. Sorry, but double shame on the Americans for accepting our garbage for cash. And not the people, the decision makers, the government. And it's perfect. Perfect in this day and age. Okay, but that's, that's the end of that because I have this hopeful solution which is indoor composting with worms.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: I saw that.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: Yeah, it's indoor. So it's, it's the same idea as outdoor composting, but done inside with worms. They're in a container. They eat our food scraps and paper and their byproduct is black gold. Nutrient rich fertilizer that we can grow more wonderful food.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: And I saw that. So you know, obviously you said you, I was watching your, your Ted Talk video where you said you started in 1993, your friend went out of town and so you were kind of like thrown into like. Because as kids we're all trained like, yo. Like, it's funny. You're like an adult. You see a worm and you bolt in the other direction. Right. You know, like you freak out when you see a worm. Right. So. But they have very high level value when it comes to the environment, soil composition, you know, land erosion. So what exactly. How did you get your feet wet to actually start understanding what they do? Yeah.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: So again, the land. As an avid gardener and composter, I knew that I love the, the whole process of compost composting. And thank you. I had that experience in 93 with looking after my friends bin and it was a disaster. And so that was my first introduction. And I realized like the black gold that they create is so wonderful. The soil and the plants have this or the worm compost and the plants have this symbiotic relationship. The worms are providing plant food that's like delivered right there at the roots.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: Also creating an immune system. So like us, if we have a healthy immune system, if somebody next to us is sick, we may or may not get it or we'll get it less because we're strong. So same with the soil. When we have strong, healthy soil, the pathogens are always present, they're always there, but they can't get in there and eat the roots because they're protected by this beautiful healthy soil. The biodiversity. Right. The. All the microbes.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: So I just had a solution. I was, I believe I was divinely guided. And we all are. We just need to pay attention to the signs when they arrive. Right. So my first introduction was 93 and then the land closed and here we.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: Are kicked into high gear. Right. That was like. You knew that that kind of seed was planted, so to speak, no pun intended. That you were on the right direction of what was to come based, especially when that situation occurred.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Exactly, yes. And at the time I was a social worker and working with Challenged adults. They had doubly 2 mental ill. Mental illnesses. And, and so it was fascinating how I went from that. I got injured at work and I learned early on not to stay in a job that didn't serve me. So I came home when I got injured, I was like, like what now? And I came home. There was an ad in the paper. It said, are you a woman? Do you have a business idea? It was a six month course to write a business plan. And I turned to my husband, I was like, I'm quitting my job, I'm taking this course. I'm starting a warren business. Like. Like what?
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Yeah, right, right, right, right. Then the let one thing led to the another. So how does one, you know, because that's a lot of actual education. Like, you know, whether it's agriculture, soil composition and it's a lot of chemistry involved. Like we all understand, like we hear like, you know, bees are useful because they do, you know, you know, they, they pollinate, you know, flowers and you know, help with growth of flowers and seeds and things like that. We hear worms. But how did you find out the science of all this? Because there's so much information has to be involved.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: Thank you. Yes. So my first introduction with the teacher, then I was like, I'm never doing this again. And then I got, right. Then I got injured and. Well, actually when I started at the group home, they had 10 homes and a farm and they didn't compost.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: Oh, wow. Okay.
[00:05:47] Speaker B: They, you know, they paid. If you, if you produce any volume of food scraps, you pay big money to get rid of it. Of course, because it rots. Right. It attracts rodents, fruit flies.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: An issue. It's a problem.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Waste management is a huge business when it comes to, you know, disposal. I saw on your TED talk, not to derail anything, but I saw in your TED Talk like it takes up more than education. It takes up more. Like it's sometimes the largest line item budget in a city community, you know, New York City, you said was at the time, this was 13, $2 billion. Toronto was $400 million. And you just like, holy smokes, you don't even think about that.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: We don't even think about it because we call it garbage. So garbage is something you throw away and we don't think anymore about it. Right. There's so many things to think about that are filling our mind.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: Exactly right.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: So, so that's the challenge. And then the added piece with the worms is people will say this is a great idea. But I'm not having worms in my house. Right. So it's great. And that. That's what happened. I believe that I was driven. I was being pushed by Divine. I was just being driven to do this. And I have all this energy and passion, and I see food waste everywhere. Entrepreneurs are an interesting lot. I mean, we see a. When we. When we're on purpose, and we, you know, we start a business in that is meaningful to us. We have. We see more than other people in that area in this little piece of the pie.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's funny, too, because I was watching the history of food. Right. And then you find out how, like, the tortilla came. You know, the tortilla chip came. Right. They were throwing out the tortilla wraps, and then, you know, all of a sudden they're like, no, use the rest of that tortilla wrap and fry it and make it into a chip. Right. And you're like, dude, they always find something useful from what you thought wasn't even available to be used, you know?
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Right, exactly. We just need to look to nature and realize that nature does not create waste.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Everything is used.
[00:07:37] Speaker A: So I saw there's specific types of worms that can actually create the compost. And I wrote it. It was the red wiggler worm. Is there more than one type of worm that can actually do that?
[00:07:46] Speaker B: Yeah, so there are thousands of types of worms. Four have been identified. So red wigglers, European night crawlers, African night crawlers, and perionics, which is a tropical worm.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: And we're looking for surface dwellers. So after a rain, the worms will come out. Those are not the composting worms.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: Really? I did not know that.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: Yes, those are the soil. We fish with those or those are the. They're kind of the plows of the soil. And they go up and down the same hole pretty much. So they're chilling the soil. They're aerating the land. Yeah, they're. They're creating a wonderful. And pooping along the way. Creating wonderful soil.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: Right. So it's. They're. They're doing a great job. The composting worms are like cousins, so they live in different environments. They prefer the heat. So they're. That's why. Indoor or outdoor, in. In the climate where they can be outside.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Got it.
[00:08:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And they eat carbon and nitrogen. They require both. So the carbon is the. The bedding. The browns.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Like your shredded paper leaves.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: I saw that bin you made. Yeah, I saw that bin you made in that video.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And the nitrogen is your food. Scraps. And the worms require the red. The composting worms require both where the worms outside do not. They only eat carbon.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: How can you measure progress? If you're a person that says, like I saw you said, you keep one even by your sink where you're, you know, with your food. Like, what type of food could you even put in there? Is it bananas? Is it berries? I mean, like, you know, what can and can't you put in for something for worms to decompose?
[00:09:11] Speaker B: Beautiful. Thank you.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: So if you think about your plant matter, so you can put all of your fruit and veg, coffee, tea, pasta, rice. It's not that they're vegetarian. They would eat meat. It's just the meat takes longer to break down, so it may rot before the worms get to it, and that may attract rodents and other critters that you don't want.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Of course. Of course.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: So no meat, no dairy, no sauce is what stays out. And of the fruit and veg, I would say no citrus and garlic and onions.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Okay. Otherwise, everything goes really okay. And so how can. Like, if you had one by your sink, you're brand new. You're like, hey, I'm all in on this method. And you, you had the proper bin. How do you measure progress? What's the time frame of somebody being able to say, okay, this is decomposed, and then what are the next steps?
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So you set up your bedding. It's about three to five months from setup to harvest.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: It's a process.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: Right. You don't flip a switch and it's overnight. Although now I mean, we're marketed to. Right. I recently heard it's the pursuit of convenience that's killing us.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: Right, right, right.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: We keep our house the same temperature. We get in our car, we turn the temperatures the same. We're always at the same temperature. We're meant to regulate our body needs the hot and cold so that. So our, you know, we can exercise our.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Muscles are supposed to expand, contract, and be able to. Yeah.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: But we keep at the same temperature. Right. Okay. So the pursuit of comfort. So it's three to five months from setup to harvest. There's a lot of factors involved. It's temperature, moisture, airflow, particle size. So you want to chop up your scraps. So the more effort you put in up front, the faster the process works.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: The worms eat approximately half their weight per day once they're established. So for easy math, I'll use a pound of worms. Half a pound per day or three. Three to four pounds. Per week. The more you chop it again, the more exposed surface and you're adding the paper and the food, the worms eat it all and they convert it into their poop. And then once they've converted the material, you separate it. So the easiest way, if you have a single unit, is dump it out on a plastic sheet, put it in round piles. They're photosensitive or afraid of the light, so they go down into the piles. So the smaller the pile, the faster the harvest.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: If you just dump the whole thing out, have a big pile, they're just going down an inch and then. Oh, no, right. It's going to take a very long time to harvest, so. Right, right, right. Yeah. So there's, there's definitely ways to make it faster.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, you know, that's. I mean, I probably was told some of this information like, you know, when I was in elementary school and I probably, you know, unfortunately missed that chapter. But to your point, you don't really.
It's better served when you actually start understanding the importance of it as opposed to it just being a passing by lesson in class. Right. Because when a city runs out of garbage space for their garbage, all everything's on the table. Right. There's nothing anybody wants more than to get that as far away from themselves as possible. And then you make. I love the point you made. It's not like it's gone away just because it's away from your curb or away from, you know, from the dumpster that's in behind of your house or apartment, so to speak. Right. There's still many processes.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: Yeah, that, that's it. I mean, right now we're shipping so much garbage around the world. Like our electronic waste gets collected and then it gets shipped. I don't know all different places, but I know there's places in India, Philippines where they, there's like mountains of toxic e waste. And it's people's job because people are disposable. Right. We don't have enough value of people that we're like, that's okay, you're replaceable. Go pick some copper out of, out of those electronics. And it's so toxic that people are getting really sick.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: And it's a huge. Yeah, to your point, it's a huge health issue. I even want to say that a couple weeks ago, maybe a couple months ago, I saw like a trailer about like how the landfills were filling up for like something on Netflix or something of that nature. I'll have to see if I can recall that but, yeah, I saw a trailer or something like that. So I saw you do a lot of workshops as well, too, to teach people about this process and things like that. And so how has that been received? Obviously, you've been very successful.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: Over a hundred thousand students have seen my presentation.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: Wow. Wow.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: So beautiful. Thank you. When I started in, in 2002, all this energy. I had a solution, and I just went forth. I'm like, okay, everybody, you need worms? Because I heard while I was researching the worms, I learned that a pound of worms and their descendants could transform a ton of organic waste in a year. And that really. Wow. Right? And that the average. Average family produces a ton of organic waste in a year. I was like, oh, every family needs a pound worm.
[00:13:38] Speaker A: Single family.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: Yeah, every family. And so I set forth with that mission in mind, and I would have a table without realizing people were afraid of worms. Whoops. And people don't buy.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: Yeah, they associate that with filth automatically. Right. Like, you know, like, you know, it's so funny.
[00:13:58] Speaker B: Like, we're hilarious. We're so smart, but we're dumb, right? We're so smart, we become like, we don't think anymore. We're just marketed to. We're like, oh, we need to buy that spray to kill the germs. No, the germs are us.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: Right?
[00:14:10] Speaker B: We are all bacteria. We're more bacteria and fungi and all these little microbes than we are people. That's our community. All of this microbiome. Yeah. And same with the soil. But we're marketed to, so we think worms belong outside. Like, what, are we bringing them inside? No, that's true. As you said.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: And. And I think after a rainy day, people might have been traumatized. Like in a school yard by a sibling during a fishing incident. The green goo that comes out. Right. So if you were traumatized as a child, look into that as an adult.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: Right. It's a rap. You should see what happens when one of my kids.
You should see what happens when one of my kids sees an aunt. Right. Like, it's like. Like, you'd have thought, like the. You know, the. You'd have thought it was the worst thing that just encountered. You know, aliens came from space, Right. You know, and they're going into panic attacks. It's like, sweetheart, it may have came in off your shoe. Like, it's cool, you know?
[00:15:04] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. Vance, come on. Marching in.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: You're right. Right, right, right. So you did. So you've done 100,000. So I have to ask this question because obviously you do this, you know, and you're very successful at it. And I have to imagine that some of the larger fertilizer companies have a large utilization of worms in their process. Right. Because there's got to be a large commercial use of this. Or am I wrong? Am I completely missing the mark on this?
[00:15:28] Speaker B: Well, yes.
[00:15:31] Speaker A: I had to ask. That's why. That's why we're here. I generally didn't know this.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: Yeah. So the challenge is the worms, because they're a living creature, they require certain environment temperature, moisture, airflow in a large, like. And I'll. I'll talk about the recycling program. So we know in most municipalities, the recycling program is flawed.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: It's.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: It's got contaminants in there. So most of it ends up in landfill. I'm not saying anything at a school. This is the truth.
[00:15:57] Speaker A: No, it is true. It is 100% true.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: You know, and a lot of people will go to great efforts to take the labels off their jars and wash the jars. Their blue bins are so organized. They're more organized in some people's houses.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: The trunk comes along and dumps the whole thing in. Right. And God bless those people. Really? Like, really. Now there's the other side where they don't care. So they put in, like, the system doesn't take Styrofoam, say, in the municipality where you live, but maybe you move from a place where it did. So you're like, well, I put it in in the other town. So I'm just going to put it in for sure. And people will say to me, they can pick it out. I'm like, okay, like a million homes, they're going to pick out one piece of Styrofoam. No. What happens is it gets dumped on the floor. They. They eyeball the load. If it, if. If the contamination is too high, that whole load gets landfilled. No one's picking anything out.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: So all your hard work is for not.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Yes, it is.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And so now the green bin program, the organic collection. Do you have one of those? Do you have organic collection in Detroit?
[00:16:58] Speaker A: They may have it in some towns. I can't say I'm a participant. So this is why I'm actually talking to you, because you were kind of talking about me in some avenues of not doing the separation and taking the time out for the environment. Yeah. I wear my shame proudly.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: It matters. I don't know. Don't be ashamed. Because just. Right. With awareness, we can take action.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: If you don't know, we don't know.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: Unquestionably. Unquestionably. But you know, and so, but honestly, you know, it's funny because in, in a, in a small sense of ignorance, I've even said what difference does it make? It's just going out of my. As long as I don't see it, I don't like. And it's not like you're flipping about it. It's not because, because I don't. You don't think you have the time to do those things and it doesn't matter because you don't see the back end ramifications of it. Right? You, you don't. Right. And then that stuff can seep into your soil. If you have a city or a township that's not doing any sort of safety protocols or procedures or if something bad happens like it did, it happened, you know, up in GTA area, there's a snowball effect to those things.
[00:17:58] Speaker B: Well, here's the thing. So Michigan is the Great Lakes State. And now you're also the trash capital for the states. Right. Because you used to be the automotive capital and Ford, Chrysler, GM had their headquarters there. And then everyone started making cars. Even Ontario, we make cars. So Michigan lost their industry. And I, I mean I, I'm very sarcastic because otherwise I'd be crying in the corner. So I, I say like the government was like, oh, what are we going to do? We, we need an industry. What are we gonna. Hey, why don't we be the trash capital? So Michigan has the lowest tipping fees for landfill.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: I did not know.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: So the surrounding states send their ship their. I was going to say there. They ship their trash there.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's all good.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: And Tron. And Canada too. And Canada. The Canadian waste is the cleanest waste. Like it's all, again it's separated and everything's good. Okay, yeah, but, but that's a problem. That's a big problem. So when, when garbage starts to break down, it gets liquefied and it collects all the, like the battery juice and gold paints and. Right. All that stuff mixes together. Great Lake State. What happens? It seeps into the water.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: Like I know Michigan already has challenges with water. There was some, some things and this is even making it worse. Oh gosh. The government is so short sighted. In, in Canada, north of Toronto, we had this, this pristine water aquifer. Like it's, it's been dubbed like one of the purest in the world. And they were talking like it's so supposedly being closed forever now. But let's see forever doesn't the government can open it back up unquestionably. Right. And I was listening to the warden of that county and he, they were still talking about putting this landfill on this pristine waterway. Come on, quit it. And the governor of the, the warden of the, the county said, well, the, the liner has a two year guarantee. Two years. What? What? And then he said, and the, the host said, well, what happens if the water gets contaminated? He said, if it gets contaminated, we'll just add chemicals. What? Come on. Like it's pure water. Like just leave it pure. Stop.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: So, you know, like we don't think about all these things and I. And that's why it's so important that we have engagement as, as a populace that we pay attention to what the government is doing because otherwise they just do. And then we're like, oh my gosh, when did that happen?
[00:20:19] Speaker A: No, no, no doubt. Absolutely true. How do you source your worms? Like, where do you go to?
Obviously you handle them your own, but you know, I know that you also do the commercial side of, you know, you know, on as a business of it. How. Where do you get your worms from?
[00:20:34] Speaker B: Well, before 2020, I was importing from the States.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: Oh, really? Okay.
[00:20:38] Speaker B: I was. Yeah. Florida, California, Texas, Georgia, Alabama. They're all the large red wiggler growers.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Okay, okay.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: And then, and then the border shut and. Well, I mean, even for food like Canada imports 60% of our food. 60%.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: I know, I know, right? Yeah.
[00:20:56] Speaker B: Wow. It was crazy. You know, that was a really crazy time, of course, for everywhere but so we weren't able to import. Then we found a local supplier for European night crawlers, not red wigglers, which are also a fine composting worm. You know, I do more education now and I've really moved into laughter.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Like I saw that.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: And I certainly didn't want to ignore that, but the worms were so fascinating to me because generally speaking, like, I mean, you see one, you know, and then it crawls back into its dark hole and you're happy it went away. But yeah, I would love to talk about your yoga laughter because I thought that, you know, the work you do and the people that you were inspiring and making just the cure of laughter. I didn't even know yoga laughter existed. So please expand upon that, please.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: So good. So 2012, one more person said worms in the house. And I'd heard it hundreds of times in the previous 10 years, but I was like, no, no, no, no, no, you need this. People don't Buy what they need, they buy what they want. And they didn't want what I was vlogging, so 22 worms in the house. And I heard it, I felt it, I questioned, I said, I don't know what to do, universe. I've been at this for 10 years with my energy, keeping my energy up and saying, no, no, this is important. You need it. Okay. And the very next day, I was introduced to laughter yoga. It's not doing yoga and laughing, it's laughing. It's laughing as a cardiovascular exercise started in 1995 by a medical doctor, Dr. Madan Kateria. And his goal is world peace. And I believe that it was started in 1995 so we could be ready for 2020 when the world shut down. So it's not jokes or comedy, it's laughing as an exercise. So there's little games to inspire the laughter, but otherwise it's really just laughing and deep breathing.
[00:22:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And I saw the woman that was on LinkedIn, and then she said, you know, it was very hard because we're traditioned, really to be very, very stoic, you know, minimal emotion in whatever settings that we're in. Right. And laughter is not just because something is funny or because something is sad. It's also the revealing of just getting stress out of your system too. Right. It can literally just be a stress reliever.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: It's, it's. It's exactly that. Laughter is the opposite of stress. It's a beautiful. It's the best medicine. When we're laughing, we're secreting dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins versus cortisol and adrenaline. And for the time that we're in. It's so stressful. It's so stressful. There's so many things going on. And people will say to me, kathy, how can I possibly laugh? The world is falling apart. And I say, my response to that is we have to laugh. That's when we must employ our laughter. It's easy to laugh when everyone feels great. Of course, everyone just got raises at work and everyone just graduated. Everyone just got married, having babies. Everything's great.
Prices of groceries have gone down, and everyone's got a house and everyone's got lots of money. Wow. Yay. Let's have a party. Yeah. That's not reality, especially today. So it's. It's important that we laugh because it brings us to the present. We're not even thinking when we're laughing. Full on. You can only laugh when you feel safe. So coming to A laughter club. We're all laughing together. We're making eye contact. So we're. We're connecting on a really deep level. It's what, what happened with laughter. We knew this on. On a certain level. And the Greeks, the ancient Greeks, suppressed laughter. It was Plato and Aristotle. They thought that laughter was frivolous. So the more educated you were, the less you laughed. Really, you were. Looked as, like, ridiculous.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: You're not being serious about things.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Be serious. That's right.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: Stop laughing and don't be like. And, and. And then Freud came in with his, you know what. What did he say with women? Oh, I can't even think of the word now. It'll come to me.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:24:39] Speaker B: Right. So. And I think that there's still remnants of that in our DNA where we, We. If we're laughing, it's. It's ridiculous. And I'll give you an example. You know, I ride my bike. I'm in a little town, I ride my bike around town, and I, I multitask. So I do my laughter yoga while I'm riding my bike. It's great marketing.
[00:24:56] Speaker A: That's an interesting site.
You know, if I drove past, but what the heck is that? Woman's able to focus, you know, riding her bicycle and laughing like that.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: One day I saw a man with a young. It was a man with his granddaughter at. On a bridge. And I stopped, and because I talked to everyone, I get off my bike and I start approaching. And I could feel that he wasn't comfortable with me approaching. And so I. I wished him a good day. Okay, have a great day. And I got on my bike, went home. A couple days later, I was standing on that bridge, and that man came along without his granddaughter. And so he. We started talking, and he said, you know, when people see people laughing by themselves, they think there's something wrong with them. Of course I started laughing. I said, I know. And then, you know, we continue talking. I get on my bike, I ride back home. It wasn't until I walked into my living room that I was like, oh, my gosh, he was talking about me.
He thought I was cuckoo. But then, yeah, yeah, oh, she's not. And I introduced. Like I said, I do laughter yoga and.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: Yeah, right, right. But the first thought in his head was like, yo, don't come near me because you're laughing by yourself. And there's, There's. There's issues that might be. I don't want to be a part of.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: Right. And my, My resting face. Now I. I have Trained myself that I'm always like, am I smiling? And when I'm driving, I looked at the people next door and I'm like grinning and, and I, I hope they think, oh, what's wrong with her? Or they start laughing or they're pointing like, oh, look at that chick, or whatever. That's good. Mission accomplished.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: Well, you know, it's funny because people have been so conditioned that when somebody's actually smiling, you know, they're like, to your point, what's wrong with you? Why are you smiling? How can you be happy? You know, X, Y and Z is taking place in life, or I had a bad day or something in my life isn't going well. Why are you smiling for? Right. And it, we've been conditioned to think it's a bad thing. And that's really, it's, it's fascinating to me.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: Yeah, the, the health benefits are tremendous. And here's the main one I already talked about the love drugs and the connection and feeling good. Okay? So those are great. In addition, our brain requires 25% more oxygen than the rest of our body as an operating principle. It's a machine. Right. It's the answering machine.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: Right, right, right, right.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: So when we're stressed, we're not breathing properly, we're not breathing fully. We're like, we're panting, we're just like, we're tight. So laughter. We don't even have to think about, oh, breathe deep and take time, you know, because we're like, hahaha. If we want to continue, ha ha, we have to go.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: So automatically it just allows us to do our deep breathing. Our body's having a party when people are tired and they're like, you know, they say, oh, if you're tired, like, do some exercise or that's what you need to do. If you're feeling tired and your body's really tired, go for a walk because your body is getting no oxygen.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: You're not getting any oxygen in your beautiful body. So we got to move. We're meant to move.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Of course we are. No doubt, no doubt. And I've always. Stress is ultimately one of the largest killers. And to your point, you know, it's funny is you'll sit by yourself and sometimes my wife would think I'm crazy. She's like, what are you laughing about? You'll just think of a funny memory, like in. Off the top of your head. Like, YouTube has really opened up a lot of laughter. Right. Because you can easily find something that's very humorous to yourself. So, and I think people have become more expressive as on the positive sides of social media, that they can find things that generally humor them and they could actually bring some good things to them because you can get that immediate satisfaction of something that's generally funny, you know, when it comes to what you were referring to.
Now you got me laughing for no reason, to be honest with you. That's, that's us. And I saw you also talk to a friend as well too, at like 7:30 in the morning. You guys just laugh with each other too. I saw that. That's, that's awesome.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Since December 2021, she's my laughter buddy. 7:30 in the morning, she calls me. We laugh for two full minutes. No, no talking, just laughing. One minute of deep breathing and then two more minutes of laughing. I, I, I, every, you know, even although it's, what's that, three years, I, I still get in my head and think this is hilarious. And in the summer, I do it outside. I double duty. I, I'm out earthing, so barefoot, getting the earth's energy, getting the sun first light on my eye to reset my melatonin. Yeah. And I, and I thought everyone had air conditioning, so everyone had their windows closed. And my neighbors, she grooms dogs. And, and so I'm out there laughing and, and I think it's funny because I'm like, I'm out here laughing. I wonder if my neighbors knew they would, like, what would they think? And my neighbor said to me one day, I always know when it's 7:30 because I hear you laughing, like, time to get up.
[00:29:25] Speaker A: Right, Right. So like, it's her mental clock, you know, she may even be looking at like a quarter before that, like, Yep, I already know the, you know, the day routine starts. Right. But there's worse things in life than somebody finding joy about living right. And so sometimes when you actually put your mind to that, it's like, what's so bad about living right? You know, it's not downtrodden. There's much worse things than being alive. Trust me. You know, and I think, you know, I saw the video montage of all the people that are on there. And you do this for free, right?
[00:29:52] Speaker B: For free. Yeah. Four and a half years. Rashad. Oh my God.
[00:29:56] Speaker A: Amazing.
[00:29:58] Speaker B: So I started my laughter Club online. I would invite all of your listeners to join me. That's great. Tuesday morning at 9:30.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:05] Speaker B: 30 minutes of super fun self care. And yeah, and I started in June 2020 because, well, I was locked in my house and I needed to laugh. I needed something. My husband's lovely. But it wasn't enough.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: No, no doubt. You know, and there comes a point of no return when, you know, you're. Especially a personality like yours that's conditioned with. To meet people, greet, get out, and to have that taken away in such a brutally inefficient manner, you know, in addition to the rest of the world. I mean, it has cataclysmic side effects to people that people are still.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: Yeah, that's why I've continued, to be honest. That's what, why I'm. I've decided to really move into laughter to help people, because there are a lot of people. I feel like we're on the spectrum now. There's some people that are still so paranoid they won't go anywhere, they still don't leave their house. And then there's the others that never, never cared. They never did any. Anything. And that's fine, no judgment. Just where we are.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: Just where people are.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: Right.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: It's an observation.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: It's just where they are. So the laughter on the zoom, like, you can come. What I. What did I recently heard that isolation is more detrimental to our health than smoking, obesity, and alcohol combined?
[00:31:13] Speaker A: I believe it. Right.
[00:31:15] Speaker B: So what happened when in 2020, we. We isolated everybody. Like, like, how do you torture people? Keep them alone?
[00:31:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, stuff like that hasn't happened since like the Black Plague. Right. And that was, that was 700 years ago. So, I mean, maybe even longer than that. But I'm, you know, it's been a long time since something that cataclysmic happened where people were forced to do that. And again, you know, the side effects are detrimental. You know, stunted growth, loss of language use, isolation, and the mental and depression. Told that it takes on people, it's. It's devastating.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: And the people that were in long term care, they couldn't see their families. Like, imagine if you have dementia and now all of a sudden you have to look through the window to say hello to your family, like, oh my God, stop it.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: So, Kathy, I have taken up probably more time out of your schedule than I should have, but I'm so glad that I got a chance to pick your brain. And that's what this Tron podcast is all about. Because you are one of the most fascinating people I've had a chance to speak with that I'd never heard a career like this. Right. And your, your positivity is so infectious and I'm so grateful for you talk.
[00:32:18] Speaker B: Thank you. I hope that People will take the time to think about what is it that they want to do with their life. Most people are living, like, a supporting role for, you know, supporting somebody else's life. Like, maybe their parents wanted them to do something or whatever. We got to do our own. We got to follow our own path, even though it's hard sometimes to step away from those that care about us.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: I always ask this to every person. How can people find you? They don't need me. But it's important that you go ahead and exactly explain where we can find Kathy Nesbit and everything that you do.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: Yeah. So I would love to send you to my Laughter page. It's Kathy's club.com and that's where you. The free Laughter Club is right at the top. And the Worm website, if you want to know more. I can't ship to the States, but it's Kathy's composters.com lots of videos and news media there to talk about why we want to do the Worms for sure. The importance of it. Because we all eat and we all produce, Produce, food, waste.
[00:33:14] Speaker A: Without question. Without question. I think at the end of the day, we all have a responsibility of the environment that we live in. Right. And we all can play our part in that. And so I would. I'm so grateful that you took time out of your schedule. I love the work that you do. It is honestly one of the most fascinating things that I've had a chance to dip my toe just in a little knowledge of. And I'm really, really appreciative that you took time to be on the tribe podcast. I really appreciate you.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: Thank you, Rashad. Thank you.
[00:33:38] Speaker A: Have a wonderful day. Okay.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: And you. Bye.
