Tree of Life
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Well, gracious, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever day it is for you that you're listening to this podcast. You know, I always assume that people are just going to be listening to the Jan Arden Podcast Show and Variety Hour on the very day that it comes out. But you know what? I would be remiss to think that, you know, sometimes people are listening at midnight, they're walking around their backyards nude.

with a cup of tea in their hand or tequila. Maybe they're in their car driving around. Zaya Tong joins us again this week and we're so thrilled to have her. Adam Karsh, of course, is here. Zaya, how was your week?

Oh, my week has been fabulous. Actually. We had a chance to work together on a fun, you know, we were doing the helping the horse day thing with Melissa Grello online. And that was really great. And yeah, looking forward to today. I have a cup of tea, but I'm not nude. No, that's good. I mean, I suppose you could do an all nude podcast. It really wouldn't matter. No, it wouldn't, but it would be kind of titillating. I'm not,

You know, I live alone in the trees and I don't have a lot of titillating. Yeah. That just went into my head and swirled around, but I have no window coverings. And I know, you know, I always find people in the cities actually quite brazen. I always think I'm brave out here with no window coverings and walking around and people are like, aren't you scared out there? And I'm like, well, there's nobody around. No one could possibly see me. I think on the contrary, people that live in high rises are,

Oh, wow. In our settings. Those are fishbowls. There's actually just, you know, I know that we're going a little bit. We are always going sideways in our conversations, but there happens to be hot dogs is starting this week. And, you know, it's the best documentary festival in the world, really. And one of the documentaries that I saw is about a nudist camp. So we should watch that and then maybe comment on it another time, too. Yeah.

Well, I just, you know, whenever I stay in hotels, like say downtown Toronto or Vancouver or LA or gosh, you know, New York, you know, it's amazing to look really a hundred yards across from you into these buildings with people that are living their lives without any,

They're not shy or they're not trying to cover themselves up. They're not going up and pulling the curtain back because they catch you sort of looking in. They don't give a crap. No, it's true. It's true. And it's a little, you know, there have been some creepy, creepy things.

moments when people, I mean, A, obviously some people have telescopes and things like that, but also there's drones, right? There's people who have actually run drones up the side of high rises, kind of like very modern high-tech peeping Toms, which is a little freaky. No, if I saw a drone hovering outside my window, I honestly don't know what I would do. Take a baseball bat to it.

Well, yeah, I mean, and I've seen a lot of things over the years. I've been staying in hotels for 35 years and I have seen it all. I'm not going to elaborate on that.

I've just sort of, I have shut my own curtains, nevermind them shutting their curtains. I'm like, here's something I don't want to see, which brings me to the first topic that I want to discuss, which is it's, it's about desert Island stuff. And I know people over the years have been inundated with desert Island lists, desert Island discs. What would you take with you on a desert Island? All of those things. I think every question in the world has been asked, but what I want to ask you Zaya is, you know,

I just read a story. It's quite a well-known story. They call him Italy's Robinson Caruso. And for the last 30 years, he's been the only resident of a really beautiful island off the coast of Sardinia. His name is Moro Morandi. And he's finally saying goodbye to this little island. Why is he saying goodbye? Well, authorities have been repeatedly threatening him with eviction for many, many years. He's 81 years old.

And he's been living there since 1989. And he announced his departure this past Sunday. I'm going to leave, he wrote. And he's done it for 32 years. He says he's really pissed off about the situation. He doesn't want to leave. He's a former teacher. But anyway, how would you guys feel about being by yourself for three decades on a little Thailand island? I mean, he has loved it. It has been amazing.

the privilege of his life, he says. I could not do it. Adam, what do you think? I'm good by myself for a weekend. No problem. I don't think I could live in isolation indefinitely like that. So, no.

I could three decades. No, thank you. I couldn't do it. I think, you know, I mean, obviously we've all thought so much about isolation during the pandemic, but the number one thing that comes to my mind is food. I like food too much. I like different kinds of food too much. I like Japanese food. I like Italian food. I like food from Turkey. You know what I'm saying? And if I was stranded on an island and

And I was just stuck with like, I don't know, whatever shrubs there were that that would drive me nuts. I wouldn't be able to handle that. Yeah. I don't know much about what he was able to eat while he was there. Or if I'm I think he had food coming in. Basically, he said he spent 30 years chasing animals.

tourists off the island which is which is kind of funny I mean you roll up on your boat and it's just little old guy comes out who's probably just as brown as can be chasing you off the island anyway I just I just wondered you know what you guys would think of that I think it takes a really a very special kind of individual to find that kind of solitude I think COVID has I

Probably for the first time in certainly our generation, Zaya, people have been faced with inordinate little pieces of time by themselves. Yeah, I mean...

There are definitely people, like you said, it takes a certain type to be a hermit. There are hermits and hermits have existed through history. We've even got the hermit on the tarot card, right? Like, you know, Thoreau writing Walden, he was like a hermit for a long period of time. And being a hermit, there's something beautifully meditative about it because you are connected to the universe in a way that you wouldn't be otherwise.

But wow, for me, I'm picturing like I think that the next decade is going to be like, you know, a reworking of like, you know, the roaring 20s. Except it's going to be the roaring 20s of the 2020s because I think people are going to be so desperate to spend time with each other. And I think I've said this to you before, Jan, I have dreams of going to parties. There was one week where I had three dreams in a row of being at a party.

kind of like people a lot. I really do. And I think that's what I've realized. I'm just not one of those people who there's some people who just they're misanthropic too. Like, you know, some people are also just like, I hate people. I'm going to be in my cottage. And I'm like, no, I miss I

I miss sitting around having tea naked. No, I'm kidding. I totally don't do that. No, but, but I think that interaction, the camaraderie, I think our takeaway for, for millions and millions of people have, will be, uh, the separation from their friends and family. And, um,

And people being forced to spend time by themselves. I personally feel like I've learned a lot about myself and I have always spent time by myself. You're super, you know, I've read your, I've read your book, your latest book, and, you know, you talking about, you know, escaping to the basement and that's how you really discovered your love for music and you're a wise one. So what lesson would you impart? What did you learn that you think is the most important lesson from spending alone time during the pandemic?

Oh gosh, I think that you're much stronger than you are and much more resilient and much more self-reliant. And that, you know, given the opportunity, you can figure out how to do pretty much anything.

we're living in a time, imagine our pioneers trying to figure out things about weather and plants and the how-tos and how do you make a well and how do we make this windmill and how do we put up the barn? And gosh, now we can push a button and get unbelievably intricate instructions about pretty much anything in the world. Building drones or bombs. The internet is a vast place. But for me, I would never, ever have embarked on a musical journey had it not been

for the hours, thousands of hours spent by myself as a young person. And I really started down that road of having a conversation with myself that I was aware of. Because you know, you're talking to yourself, you know, you're, you know, you're thinking thoughts, and you know, you're asking questions. But I don't think, you know, at 9, 10, 11 years old, you think very much about the narrator or the author of those questions, which is you.

I don't know what, I think we just kind of set it aside somehow. But when I realized that it was a conversation that I was having with myself and that I was going to be responsible for things in my life going forward, that I had to be responsible for myself, that was important. And I did caution people in my book. I'm like, listen, at some point in your life, and I had to actually write a caveat because I wrote the book before the pandemic. So my publisher, my editor had me write a little piece about, listen,

This chapter about being alone was written long before this happened. And it's important, really important, whether you have four kids, whether you're in a great relationship, whether you're in an office with 50 people, you have to figure out how to find time for yourself every day to be on your own, to be by yourself. That's my takeaway. It's important.

And it is because, you know, I don't know about you. I also feel, you know, having written a book, you can't do it without alone time because alone time is really creative time, you know? And I have to wonder what this Italian man, you know, what was blooming in his mind beyond just roaming around and chasing people away because every creative person that I've ever met requires solitude in order to do their work. So there's a beauty to it for sure. But I'm not sure about 30 years. Yeah.

Yeah, I just a little less. It gave me a bit of anxiety. I had read about him over the years. I probably read about him in my early 40s and he'd been there for like 11 or 12 years. And I thought 11 or 12 years. And so when this article popped up the other day in my feed, I was like, oh, my God, he's still there. But I have a deep respect for him.

Anyone that, you know, wants to just live off the grid, I guess that's what you call it. I'm always fascinated with those people that live in Alaska or the Northern territories and literally go in there. There's no corner store folks. And they live off the land. And a lot of them are city guys that are, you know, in their twenties, they drag their, their unbeknowing girlfriend. Oh, I love you so much. Let's go to, let's go up there.

And meanwhile, they're just struggling the first few years. Anyway, interesting story.

You won't catch any of us doing it. I guess that was my very long-winded question. Zaya's not going to do it. Adam is certainly not going to do it. And write us and let us know. Write us at the Jan Arden Podcast on Twitter and tell us if you'd ever consider going on an island. My friends actually got offered a couple of years ago to stay at a lighthouse for like a year. Anyway, we'll be back. You're listening to the Jan Arden Podcast. I'm here with Zaya Tong. Don't go away. All by myself

Welcome back to the Jan Arden podcast. We've had another podcast going again in between our breaks. We just keep talking. But here we are. Thanks for joining us. Zaya, I'm so glad you're back here. I know you're so freaking busy all the time. I know you're hosting things. Oh, I love these chats. I'm super happy to. Well, it's so greatly appreciated. And it's been, Adam and I talk about this quite a bit. It's been such a saving grace for me this last year.

being out here in the trees to look forward to the podcast every week. And it was like just touching base and hearing what Caitlin was up to and Adam was up to and being able to see somebody's smiling, beautiful face and feel that connection. And it's something that really lingered for days afterwards. And then before I knew it, I was getting ready to record another one.

So I want to thank all our listeners for, you know, making this possible so we can have conversations and be together and have camaraderie and,

So, you know, as much as, you know, it is important to be alone. It's finding that balance, isn't it? It's finding the balance. Obviously, we don't want to be on a desert island to any of us, but there's a lot of people that do. Last week, we were talking about 120,000 people signing up to go to Mars for the opportunity. I'm like, who are these people? I want to meet them. They're probably all at Comic-Cons. Oh, my gosh. Not into that.

Anyway, I'm just taking a big drink of my soda water. Religion. I know this is a touchy thing, too, and I wanted to get to this last week. And I'm thinking to myself, was there some theme I had going last week? I doubt it very much. It seems to me that, you know, religion is at the forefront of things again, because once again, COVID has...

kind of shone a light on large gatherings and, you know, these churches, you know, it doesn't matter what the denomination is. There's a lot of, of churches that have not wanted to shut down their congregations and not have these weekly gatherings. And it's, you know, there's the police get involved and there's, you know, anyway, I don't feel like religion is something,

I don't even know how to put this delicately because I don't want to, you know, cause people to be mad or think that I'm anti-religion, which I'm not. I'm not a religious person myself, but I think it's got to change with the bloody times. Yeah, for sure.

I mean, it's weird, right? Because people are leaving religions in droves right now. I read an interesting stat the other day that I found really surprising, which is that there are more members of Amazon Prime than there are members of a church, mosque or synagogue. So 59% of the American population is a member of Amazon Prime and only 50% belong to a church and a mosque or a synagogue. But like,

It's interesting, right? Sorry, I'm just laughing. Well, no, it's true, but our times are changing. And I read a book some time ago called Monocultures. I hope I can kind of reflect what's in it fairly decently. But she talks about how every...

sort of epoch in history is sort of reflected by a grand narrative or a grand story. So, you know, a long time ago, what, you know, we're talking 12th, 15th century, all that sort of stuff, centuries even beforehand, religion was the dominant narrative of society, right? Your family, your work, your kids, your friendship, like everything, like God was in charge of the whole nine yards of

And then kind of around, you know, the 18th century, we're kind of looking at more of a scientific model. Things become more mechanistic. You've got science explaining a lot, the industrial revolution, machinery, people moving out from, you know, out of the

out of like, you know, the countryside into the cities, this sort of like manufacturing mentality really sets in. And what she describes now is that now we have an economic story, right? Everything is about widgets and the economy and you invest in your children and everything, how we define ourselves, our family, what are you worth?

you know, all these sorts of things are defined by our monetary value. Our modern churches are our banks. You know, today we don't worship gods. We worship ourselves on Instagram. So there's been a big shift in those ways. And I think that

But sometimes there's a level of reactionary elements to this too. A lot of people are losing faith, as we put it, but people need a sense of community. And I also feel that that's why we see these cults. That's why you see people joining NXIVM or QAnon, because people desperately do want purpose. They do want community. They do want to feel a part of something bigger. So there's an aspect to this. But

If I could just, if I don't sound like I'm rambling too much, another sort of thing that I find really interesting. A friend of mine now is Louis Lapham. He's the legendary editor of Harper's. He also is the editor of Lapham's Quarterly. And we've been talking about this issue a little bit and he has just vast, vast historical knowledge of

And what I love about what he sees as the next approach for religion is he really sees environmentalism as being a new form of religion in the sense that we're returning our eyes to the sacred. A lot of like indigenous societies, you know, like in terms of, you know,

Wolves are really eminent and spiritual or whether it's trees or looking at all the different totems in our world and really having a respect for the sacred again. So that's almost seen as sort of pantheistic, right? Like seeing gods in many different places, which I thought was like a really interesting take on...

our movement now is not just from necessarily one dude with a gray beard, who's like looking at us from the sky and kind of directing the whole show, but maybe there is something really to the sacred in the world all around us of the rivers being gods of the trees being gods of the animals being gods of all of us recognizing the Godhead within us. Anyway, that is a rant. If I've ever heard one from Amazon prime all the way to the rivers, but here,

we are but let's get out of my mind like get out of my mind because it's exactly something that has been in the forefront of my my ponderings really this last couple of months I've been reading so many books that deal with that I just just finished braiding sweetgrass oh yeah Robin Wall Kimmerer

And she is a professor at a Boston University, but she wrote this book several years ago and it has just been embraced by so many people. And it's exactly that, Zaya. It is speaking about the sacred of nature. I will never forget reading a chapter she wrote about sweetgrass and obviously it's a very important part of nature.

you know, early American culture, just the use of it and in ceremony, burning it, all of this kind of stuff. But she spoke about

they would talk to the plants and the animals about using them. Like there was a real ritual part of it. It wasn't like massive industrial stuff where you've got millions of acres being cut down by giant machines and watered. And there's never any human touch. There's never any human interaction. There's no human interaction with plants.

hundreds of thousands of dairy cows that are hooked up to machines, you know, feeding into this, the motherboard. And it's just a weird thing to think about. But this book deals with that sacred, that religion of

the trees knowing that we are walking among them, the plants and the animals actually needing us to harvest. And she's a botanist, right? She's a scientist. She is. The other thing that I love too about that book is how she talks about how in her native language and in many native languages, right? Like there's a real division between saying something like almost all life has...

you know that it's alive. Whereas we call most objects, like we talk about animals as it, or, you know, plants as things or what have you, right? Whereas she was actually talking about linguistically, how they actually divide things into what's alive and what's dead. So if you're talking about any sort of living thing, you have a sense in the language that that is the case. I'm not putting it nearly as eloquently as she did, but,

But I also learned not too long ago that in Indigenous languages, many, there isn't even a world for wilderness. Because wilderness is a very Eurocentric Western idea that there's this divide between you and nature. And like there's a place where, you know, human beings don't step in. For a lot of Indigenous cultures, there is no wilderness. They are wilderness. They are like absolutely part of the world that surrounds them. Well, they talk about tree people.

And it's not people living in the trees. It's the trees. It's the tree people, the trees themselves, the standing people. And we'll get into that too. We only have a few seconds in this segment. But when we come back, there's another, I want to talk to you guys about books a bit. But I just recently read Richard Powers' The Overstory as well. And it's one of the most amazing books I've ever read in my life. And it does talk about

trees and the importance of well just the importance of nature and boy have we ever found that out in this last 15 months because people are going there in droves this is a jan arbor podcast we'll be right back

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Go right now. There is unrest in the forest. There is trouble with the trees. For the maples want more sunlight and the oaks ignore their pleas. Welcome back to the JNR podcast. I'm here with the wonderful, amazing scientific journalist. Last week I called her a scientist, but I meant scientific journalist. And as much as she's one of the smartest women I've ever spoken to in my life, she corrected me on that. And...

She's an author. She's a lover of all things and absolutely a scientific journalist. But yeah, anyway, Zaya wanted to immediately go into something that prompted a story. So I'm just going to let you take it. Just go. We're talking about the wilderness and nature and

Well, you know, something weird happened to me last night at 4.30 in the morning, lying in bed. And all of a sudden I heard this huge smash, smash of glass breaking in my living room. And so I jumped up in the middle of the night and went, holy crap, what the heck is that? And I came out into the room that I'm in now. I've got some big glass windows here. They're all intact.

And I thought, okay, maybe it's the light that I have over the seedlings. I was telling you I was planting the seedlings. Nope, that's all intact. Then I went to the aquascape. As I told you, I've got this underwater little aquascape. And I was like, maybe the aquarium crashed. Nope, it's totally fine. So I went back and then I went, no, I did not hallucinate that. And I came back out and there's a big...

plant back there. And I'll show you, I did, I decided to keep it for show and tell. You can see that this is a pretty big and pretty heavy vase here. Yes. It crashed to the ground in the middle of the night. So the reason why, you know, I'm not calling an exorcist right now. And the reason why this isn't like a poltergeist segment is because

because there's no windows open here. Okay. Like it's been storming here. There's no wind. There's no reason for a heavy pot to crash in the middle of the night. But my plant of course is growing. My plant has been a little bit tippy and I know that it is, you know, the thing is if we could see plants in slow motion in time-lapse, you would see these are living, breathing. Well, we've all, we've all seen those time-lapse things. Yeah. Remarkable.

Exactly. And so, you know, when you're talking about the overstory or there's a wonderful scientist out of BC, her name is Suzanne Simard, who's been studying trees for ages. And she talks about the wood wide web. Right. And how trees are connected by a mycorrhizal network of fungus that connects all the roots and that there's mother trees and parent trees and they feed their young baby trees.

trees and actually, you know, pay a little bit more attention to the ones that they're related to. And then that not only do they share sugars and nutrients and waters below ground, but above ground, you've got trees like acacia trees, right? Like if a giraffe is nibbling on an acacia tree, it can send off a gas about 50 meters. So other acacia trees are like, holy shit, there's a giraffe coming and they start producing more tannins to make more bitter leaves. And so there's the

are communicating and they are living. And then if you think about, you know, all those people, I haven't done ayahuasca yet, and I'm not advocating that anybody do ayahuasca, but of course, ayahuasca is a plant medicine from the Amazon that we have this synaptic ability to be able to sort of, you know, ingest this. And it causes a lot of hallucinations, but also profound hallucinations for a lot of people. And a lot of those people say the plants are talking to me.

And throughout a lot of history, people have said the plants are talking to me. We always talk about ourselves as we're talking to the plants as if they're these inert beings. And that's what I mean. Like if I had come out here and it was just a vase that fell over and there was no life form inside of the vase, that would have made sense.

they're alive. And that's the thing. Imagine if we did go to Mars and imagine if we found a fern there, we would not be excited, but we might be really missing the point because that might be the wisest, most intelligent fern. And we would completely miss the boat. And I really think that in the future, we're going to start to understand a lot more about our own ignorance about, about the world that surrounds us today. Love every single word that just came out of your beautiful heart because it's

The importance of the trees around us, the plants, and people kind of know this in a roundabout way, when you pop a pharmaceutical into your head,

It comes from a plant somewhere. It was derived from a plant. This wisdom has been with us for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. I mean, obviously there were shame and there was the wise crone medicine woman in the villages that passed down their knowledges. And that was usually passed down from, you know, from the mother to the daughter, from the daughter, you know, to the granddaughter and all this plant knowledge, you know, the people would go to get fixed, to heal wounds. It always makes me laugh about,

you know, molds and, and, you know, blue cheese and the, and the beneficial, the penicillin type qualities and that they somehow figured out this is going to help heal this wound. We're going to stuff this in there. And just over time and tradition, plants are the secret to us surviving the, this crazy journey on earth.

after reading Richard Powers, the overstory. And I do want to go out there and just say, read this book, uh, read, uh, braiding sweetgrass for sure is, is a brilliant book that we were just speaking of. And, um, the overstory, and it's just what Zaya was talking about this interconnectedness and that, well,

Well, there's just some scientists that say the trees are actually happy to have us there. And like the trees putting out their gases and their warnings to the other trees that the giraffes are coming. The giraffes are coming. Make yourselves taste terrible. But just there is magic in it. Who doesn't feel better after a hike or a walk through the trees or getting out or that elusive thing called camping?

where people go and sit and stare at a fire for hours every night and wonder why they feel so great. They're not doing anything in particular. They're looking at a fire and they're talking to each other.

Yeah. And all those people in Japan who love forest bathing, right? They call it, it's actually called forest bathing, being able to go out there and, and just be surrounded by a lot of other beings. It's actually so interesting to see that it calms the mind so much, you know, takes us away from all our worldly anxieties and, and, you know, you just get back to the roots and get back to the basics. Well, it just, the thought Zaya of,

trees holding hands underground almost makes me want to burst into tears. You're so sweet. But it's the truth. It's, it's like, I mean, I live in a forest. So I'm very aware of, you know, people have asked me over and over how, you know, how are you doing? And, you know, you live by yourself. And, and I'm just like, I don't really feel like I ever lived by myself. I've got all these soldiers. I mean, thousands of trees. I have 14 acres of a forest here.

And there's always things moving. But when I read Richard's book and braiding sweetgrass as well, just about the moss and how everything's speaking to each other. And I don't know, I just feel very lucky to be able to experience this every day. And, you know, most of my friends live in the city and they're lucky if they look at one little tree. So I think we need to do better for

human beings in general I think our governments need to step in I think our government here actually one of the uh the campaign promises was to plant a billion trees I don't know if people remember that about the liberal government was one of the things they were going to do was plant a billion trees now I don't know if any of you have seen any of these trees being planted but if you know about them or want to let us know that'd be great but it's important to

Best time to plant a tree? 15 years ago, right? And also, you know, as authors, I mean, I really took a stand when it came to the publishing of my book because the end of my book talks about baobab trees and how much I absolutely love them. These are trees that have been standing since the Roman Empire and we're losing them today at a rapid rate, right? And trees and the book being, the reality bubble being so much about life and

not turning life into a product. So I refuse to have, my book is only printed on recycled paper and I turned down several deals around the world, you know, in several countries where they, they said they couldn't or they wouldn't make the effort to print it out of recycled paper. Because at this time, at this moment, when we need the lungs of the

planet more than ever to help us solve the crisis, the climate crisis. Why would I chop down a tree if I absolutely didn't need to when there's so much recycled waste and paper that I could actually use to be able to print my book? But I also want to just to maybe wrap up this segment with a quote by my good friend Rob Stewart, who passed away. He was a wonderful shark activist. He created the film Shark Water Extinction. And he said, by

By mid-century, if we continue on our current trajectory, we face a world with no fisheries, no coral reefs, no rainforest, declining oxygen concentrations in the ocean, and 9 billion hungry, thirsty people fighting over what remains. In the space, in the life space of one single baobab tree, we've consumed most of our life support system. So, you know, think of what a tree has witnessed. Think of how important it is to extend their lifespan as much as we can. And I think all

awe and respect. Again, we started this segment talking about the sacred and like, we've got to respect the sacredness of other life forms, even if they don't look like us. Beautifully said. And I'm just going to end it right there. We're going to be right back. You're listening to the Jan Arden podcast with the wonderful Zaya Tong. Welcome back. Welcome back.

It's just, boy, this goes by quickly. It feels like we've been talking for like five minutes. We're on our last segment. You're listening to the Jan Arden Podcast show, Variety Hour. You should see us. We all are in sequence. We look the same. I'm glad you guys got the outfits. Thank you.

And we're Zooming. So if you guys can imagine us, we're all looking at each other. So I wish actually our listeners could actually join a giant Zoom and we could just all have these conversations together. But I guess that would just be a little bit too complicated, wouldn't it?

Well, no, I think that's a great idea. I think doing one live podcast so that a lot of your listeners who listen all the time can join you and the conversation would be great. Yeah, I was thinking about trying to figure out how to do a live podcast. That's exactly it. Just so everybody could, we could sort of see everybody and all 11 of you. They could hear the stuff that happens in the breaks too because they'd be there the whole time. Oh, I know. It just goes off.

This is really coming from a different part of the brain. I think everyone is being inundated with Bitcoin, cryptocurrency. What the hell is it? Someone I know. I'm not even going to say what her profession is because that will give her away who she is in my life. A friend of mine gets up.

Two o'clock, three thirty in the morning, four ten a.m. She's checking her Bitcoin. She's checking her cryptocurrency. She wakes her husband up and they will see something dip down to like thirty seven thousand five hundred for a Bitcoin. And they buy two and they get up and they do that and they're shuffling around their whole world buying Bitcoin. And it makes me super nervous. Like she's trying to talk me into Jan. You need to get one Bitcoin. I'm like, I don't even know what the F you're talking about.

Zaya, if you want to just give me what you think a bit. I kind of understand cryptocurrency, but not really. All I know is if your computer goes down and there's no power, you can't access it. You can't use it. You can't spend it. It's not like a gold bar. It's not like having 10 bucks in your pocket. You're basically screwed. Remember the guy that had bought Bitcoin like two years ago or whatever? And it was on a memory stick and he somehow ended up in a junkyard or a... I don't know.

And he couldn't find it. My friend Mark Fraunfelder had the same thing. He wrote a great article about losing thousands of dollars, what could be millions now because the price fluctuates so much because he couldn't remember the passcode. Right. And can you imagine just being like, I can't. And then also, well, I mean, so here's the thing for people who are listening. There's lots of different cryptocurrencies out there right now. There's something like 66.

6,700 different ones. The most famous of which- Can you basically say what it is? Yeah. So basically a cryptocurrency or Bitcoin, which is the most famous one right now, is a way of its money that, you know, it's almost like casino tokens in a way that are sort of accounted for on a distributed network of servers. And so the servers do a mathematical process

puzzle, which is called proof of work. And that's how the information gets laid down on a distributed network. So for sure, for sure, for sure, there's an accounting of this money. It's on all these different servers. The problem of this, okay, well, actually, let's talk about why people like it. And then I'll talk about the problems. So the

The reason people like this is like some people are like, I hate the central banking system because it's evil. Right. And OK, now we found a way to take the money outside of the bank. So I get that. Another aspect of it is it's anonymous. So you can send money back and forth. And if you care about things like anonymity and for many reasons, you might. That's an important reason to invest in cryptocurrencies. Another reason is people see this as the future of being able to send money to one another. But here are some of the cons.

For one, and by con, I actually mean con in a sense, right? It's very volatile. So your friend is, you know, has insomnia now because sometimes you've got, it's up at like 50,000. Sometimes it's dropped down to 3000. You see huge booms and busts. But the other thing too is it's in some countries, it's not in others. So for example, it's banned in China entirely. So your Bitcoin there is worthless. But here's the other thing.

aside from losing your password or what have you, which can be also very, very, you know, I'm sure depressing for the people who've had that happen. The biggest issue is that it's insanely bad for the environment, right? Because like basically right now running all those servers every single day is the equivalent in terms of electricity usage of like the country of Argentina. And at a time when we're like basically doing hard

best. Everybody's like, let's get those emissions down. Let's bring down our CO2. We're jacking it up. Now, some people are saying, okay, there are some climate coalitions. There are some people working in Bitcoin who are saying, let's just use green energy. Let's use hydro or let's go and use geothermal in Iceland. And we mine for Bitcoin there. And that's fine. But

But that's not the reality of where we're at today. The reality is most people are going to where electricity generation is the cheapest, which is China, which still uses a lot of coal, although they're trying to transition out of it. So basically, we are creating a tremendous amount of real pollution for a virtual currency. Right. And I get why I get.

I get why your friend might be into it. I get why everybody's trying to make a quick, fast buck. We live in very volatile times. People are looking for security into old age and people like, you know, if this is a way that I can get money, I get it. But if you ask me,

It's a little bit, I'm not investing in it because I don't want to, given what I know. I think it would be a little bit hypocritical at this point to be trying to save the world and killing it with my choice of currency at the same time. I have never been interested in quick money. You know, I watched my dad and my mom both work so hard and earn their money. My dad was a concrete guy his whole life.

He started out, you know, finishing it, pouring it, being the labor guy. And then you just get to a point where your body can't facilitate that. It's hard work. Concrete is, you know, you get lots of burns on your skin from the lime and you know, you gotta, it's, it's just a hard medium to work in. It's an excellent medium. It's lasts a long time and it's, it's a pretty cool invention. I think of the last few thousand years as concrete, but then he just sort of started running the business, but he, um,

He talked about fast money and just how it was a road to unhappiness. And I think it still is. I am. There's nothing like, I just, I think working and earning your way, like I'm living in a house that I've worked for that I've earned. I didn't,

Nobody handed it to me. My parents had no inheritance or anything like that. My parents were, you know, they didn't have anything like that to give to me. And every bit of money that my mom and dad had saved went into looking after them because they both had Alzheimer's. So I went through that really quickly. But I think it's a weird thing to chase, to be rich. I've always, it's never motivated me in the arts, in what I've chosen to do for a living or in my career.

You know, I say no a lot more than I say yes to jobs that offer this. If it's not the right thing for me, no matter how much money it is, I don't do it.

Yeah, same. Although I was on a panel about this recently, I do understand and accept that I do feel very privileged that I ever have the chance to say no, because I know sometimes people, when they're working hard, when they've got kids, they might not ever have that opportunity. A lot of the way our economic system today is set up as a trap, right? It's a trap for a lot of people, and it is hard to churn out of it.

So I understand why people go for this, but like you, I'm not in for the razzle dazzle. I would rather just sort of save the best that I can rather than gamble. I'm just not a gambler. I don't like taking big risks with my savings. I do like the Britney Spears machine in Vegas where you sit in the chair.

$20 can last you like half an hour if you play it right. And the chair vibrates if you win on a certain level. You're always winning then. And toxic and the song toxic plays. And then when you get a bonus. Yeah. So I know exactly where the Britney Spears machines were at the Planet Hollywood Hotel. And I'm hoping when I do get back to Vegas someday,

To spend some money and to pray that I hit big. No, I'd never do that. Like you, I think that there's a whole different, you know, we might return to a different way of money and exchange. I'm actually just too long of a story, but a long time ago, I'm looking at a book right now called Four Lost Cities. And there was a city that I read about where they never used money. Money was not part of the form of exchange. So we're thinking today that this is the only way it is. And I think it's always really important to think that

This is not the only way. It's not the only way it ever was and not the only way it ever needs to be. I will come to your house and sing some songs for you, Zaya. Oh, and I'll make you dinner for those songs, Jan Arden. If you will make me some dinner. That's the perfect barter for me. You've got a deal.

Okay, well, that'd be fantastic. Listen, Zaya, thank you so much for being with us today. The Reality Bubble is Zaya's brilliant book and you must read it. It'll link you back up with things that are important and just a really powerful

great way of looking at the world and how you can be part of so many solutions. And, you know, we're all concerned about stuff. So that's the reality bubble by Zaya Tong. You're spinning your fingers at me, Adam. I know you are. But what a pleasure it is always to see your beautiful face and to hear your insights. And you really are such a remarkable human being. I'm so, so proud to

been able to get to know you a little bit this last couple of years. You came up on my memories yesterday on my iPhone and it was you and I, we were standing in the hallway of yes, the bell and it was the first time that you'd come in to do the podcast. So I'm really grateful for that. And I'm grateful to Caitlin who organized it. And I'm grateful for this new friendship that we've all formed.

You know, it's wonderful. Sometimes we can all be separated, but even through Zoom and through technology, you know, good, true friendship finds a way. Well, having your support in issues of, you know, animal welfare and things like that, the reciprocity is, he's really winding me up. Thank you, Adam. Car, Ziaton. Thanks, Adam. Goodbye, Stan. We're a minute over. Bye, everybody. Okay, bye. Toonly doo.

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